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Introducing Google Drive... yes, really
- antihero 15y agoWhat would be awesome is if this integrates with Google Music and Google Music worked in the UK. They are our files, let us listen to them.
- driverdan 15y agoAbsolutely no mention of how files are protected. Is encryption used? Is it technically possible for a Google employee with proper access to view your files (with private key encryption it'd be impossible)? Should we assume this is this on par with Gmail email attachments (viewable by certain employees)?
- kijin 15y ago> Can Google employees access your files? Do bears shit in the woods?
- packetslave 15y agoQuoting from google.com/privacy: "We restrict access to personal information to Google employees, contractors and agents who need to know that information in order to process it for us, and who are subject to strict contractual confidentiality obligations and may be disciplined or terminated if they fail to meet these obligations." Speaking as a Googler, everything I've seen indicates a strong company-wide emphasis (both technological and process/policy) on user privacy. Not only who CAN access your individual data, but who DID access it and why.
- driverdan 15y agoI've updated my post. I didn't mean does everyone have access, I meant is it even technically possible for someone with proper access to view the original file. If files are encrypted properly then no one at the company would be able to access them.
- amalter 15y agoClearly unencrypted. They dedup, enable OCR searching, transparent online access to office style documents, etc.. These features would not be possible if they encrypted your bytes before being sent over the wire. You might want to look into Tarsnap. It's more expensive and you don't get the fancy features, but they offer opaque encrypted file handling. Also, there have been a couple niche strong privacy centered providers that have commented in this thread. I suppose one could create a Truecrypt container and have GDrive sync it in the background. Wonder if Google will ever complain about files they can't process.
- packetslave 15y agoClearly unencrypted. They dedup ... Just like Dropbox does.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- shmerl 15y agoSince it's not mentioned - assume nothing is encrypted and avoid using it unless you encrypt data on your own accord.
- tlogan 15y agoI just installed. And it seems like I cannot edit Google Docs using MSWord/OpenOffice on my computer... I though that is point of GDrive. Am I missing something?
- davidwurtz 15y agoGoogle docs are meant to be edited on drive.google.com But if you drag MSWord docs into your local google drive folder, it will upload and sync to all your devices.
- tlogan 15y agoNow I understand why Drew and company are not worried at all...
- mikek 15y agoInteresting... they are not just going after Dropbox with Google Drive, but also Evernote. "Search by keyword and filter by file type, owner and more. Drive can even recognize text in scanned documents using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology."
- jcampbell1 15y agoIs OCR really the feature that makes Evernote a popular product? I don't use it, but I have seen people use it, and it looks more like a notebook that syncs across all your devices. There is little notion of "files". I can't imagine this will have much effect on Evernote.
- esun 15y agoIt's a great feature if you scan lots of documents and want to search them. This way I have one place to store both typed and scanned stuff, and it gets me close to paperless at home.
- joering2 15y agogreat and scary the same time. before it was: "show us what you search for, and we will serve you relevant ads". now it will be: "just store your files with us, and we will know what ads to serve you around the internet".
- martincmartin 15y agoHello Fax (YC) is a launch partner.
- trotsky 15y agono linux platform "coming soon" - too bad
- antihero 15y agoDon't they use Linux a lot internally, too? It's really awful that companies such as Box, Google etc are not supporting the Linux desktop, especially seeing as desktop linux is actually a really attractive option right now - better memory management than OSX and installable on pretty much any device, and Windows is pretty much a joke for non-.NET development or unless you game. Fuck, their Android platform is based on Linux yet they don't support Linux desktop? That's pretty shitty.
- ok_craig 15y agoNot having a Drive client for Linux (yet) doesn't mean Google as a company does not support Linux at all. For example, Chrome is supported on Linux. We don't know - Drive for Linux may come further down the line. The reality is that a relatively small fraction of consumers use Linux at home or work. If I were releasing a new product, Linux wouldn't be one of my top priorities either.
- antihero 15y agoIt's a shame though, you think they'd support it. Think of everything Linux has done for them.
- glesica 15y agoAgreed, but the "techie" crowd tend to be the early adopters for products like this and help drive others to use them. It's not totally crazy of Google not to support Linux out of the gate (for the reasons you and others noted) but it is a little surprising, nonetheless.
- firefoxman1 15y agoI'm assuming it's in their best interest. If they plan on ChromeOS getting big, having GDrive built in will be a big plus.
- bvdbijl 15y agoCan anyone find information on file versioning? How long and how many versioned files are stored?
- dermatthias 15y ago30 days, and you can pin certain versions.
- ChrisArchitect 15y agoSeems like inherently, they have always been going after Dropbox, Evernote, whatever. It's the very nature of the overarching idea of Google Docs. Everything is a doc. And all these 'features' are natural parts of the system.
- cmer 15y agoVery aggressive pricing! Dropbox is 4 times more expensive for 100 GB. $5/mo vs $20. Will be interesting to see how Dropbox reacts to that.
- TomGullen 15y ago80GB on Drive is $1.60 a month ($20 a year). DropBox 100GB is $20 a month!
- TomatoTomato 15y agoThat is incorrect, you are looking at the old Google account storage costs. These are different and may supersede the old pricing. You can get started with 5GB of storage for free—that’s enough to store the high-res photos of your trip to the Mt. Everest, scanned copies of your grandparents’ love letters or a career’s worth of business proposals, and still have space for the novel you’re working on. You can choose to upgrade to 25GB for $2.49/month, 100GB for $4.99/month or even 1TB for $49.99/month. When you upgrade to a paid account, your Gmail account storage will also expand to 25GB.
- TomGullen 15y agoI went to the drive page, it said sign up top right and I clicked it and it quoted the extremely cheap yearly figures. The button is no longer there, I guess they are amending it as we speak.
- Groxx 15y agoI don't know if it is, though. I have Google's +20gb plan from an earlier purchase, and it gives me 25gb in Drive too, for $5 per year.
- TomatoTomato 15y agoIs this still the case? Mine only shows 5GB. edit: My Drive updated! You are currently using 17 MB (0%) of your 87040 MB. Should have bought more...
- sakai 15y agoIn my mind, two factor authentification is a killer feature here. Now if they can also have password-protected link sharing, this will be a much better choice for small businesses or privacy-minded individuals.
- rkudeshi 15y agoDo they actually have 2-factor authentication, though? The French translation seemed to include it, but I don't see any mention of it here. Edit: Yep, it does have it. Interesting that they don't mention it anywhere in the blog post or on the official site - you'd think it'd be a selling point compared to Dropbox.
- skystorm 15y agoIt's tied to your Google account, for which you can enable 2-factor auth.
- nigelk 15y agoIf you've got 2-factor set up on your Google account, you'll get prompted for it when you set up Google Drive.
- bvdbijl 15y agoWell, you just log in with your Google account and you can enable 2-factor auth for that, so it does have 2-factor auth
- JaggedJax 15y agoI just installed it on my PC and linked it to my account which has 2-factor enabled. It asked me for the code and worked like a charm.
- jcampbell1 15y agoI was required to use 2-factor when I installed the Mac software.
- ajross 15y agoObviously two-factor is good (though strong passwords and discipline are really no worse for personal use). But I don't think "privacy-minded individuals" are going to be heavy users of cloud storage.
- TomGullen 15y agoWow it's cheap, I was looking at it thinking $5 per month for 20gb, that's pretty competitive. Then I saw it was $5 per year! I guess they have the infrastructure to do this and still make profit.
- mhb 15y agoWhere do you see that? It says 25GB for $2.49/month - which is still great.
- randlet 15y agoIn the pricing page of My Account it says: Select a plan: 20 GB ($5.00 USD per year) 80 GB ($20.00 USD per year) 200 GB ($50.00 USD per year) 400 GB ($100.00 USD per year) 1 TB ($256.00 USD per year But in the blogpost it says:"You can choose to upgrade to 25GB for $2.49/month, 100GB for $4.99/month or even 1TB for $49.99/month" They should probably get that sorted out.
- camiller 15y agoMine said that also, until about 2 min ago. It now points to a different page with the new pricing.
- TillE 15y agoYeah. I got all excited at the idea of paying $50/year for 200GB. The actual prices are still much cheaper than Dropbox, but not quite as radical as it first seemed.
- alsocasey 15y agothe 5$/year figure is the older extra storage option for GMail/Docs/Picasa. The newer GDrive storage is 2.50$/month for 25GB.
- jcampbell1 15y agoWhen I click the mini-icon on my mac, select "Buy more storage", it takes me to a page with pricing of 20Gb for $5/yr.
- etrain 15y agoDon't see any formal Linux support, anyone know if they'll open up their API or support with FUSE?
- 286c8cb04bda 15y agoThe API is already open: https://developers.google.com/drive/ https://developers.google.com/drive/
- ajross 15y agoBut that's an API for chrome apps. You couldn't write a linux-based sync client, or FUSE mount, etc... Basically Linux users have access to the ecosystem of online apps, but not access to the files in the native filesystem (one of the things that makes Dropbox such a killer app). Frustrating.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- alecbenzer 15y ago* Hm, I wonder if I'll prefer this to Dropbox? * No linux client * Snuggle up closer with Dropbox
- icebraining 15y agoThe API seems a simple RPC over HTTP. I don't see why you couldn't write a FUSE adapter based on it.
- ajross 15y agoYeah, reading further that might be the case. My initial scan said that the apps had to be present in the chrome market and approved. But the REST API looks like it just authenticates via OAuth and does the I/O directly by the client (FWIW: the OAuth authentication would be an annoying step for a background FUSE daemon, but not insoluble). I don't know which is correct.
- bryanh 15y agoSome thoughts: It sounds like it is more of a competitor in spirit to iCloud, not Dropbox (though, obviously, Dropbox lacking those deeper integrations is troubling...). 100gb for $5/mo going to hurt Dropbox's margins... Not too surprising gDrive doesn't have iOS support quite yet...
- Johngibb 15y agoI'd bet they'll be approved today. I thought I saw an iPad in a screenshot.
- emp_ 15y agoI think this shows a massive change in direction with Google in the last years, when GMail was introduced it came with that "Holy shit that is a lot of space" while every other webmail was offering 10-500MB accounts, they came with BOOM! 5GB and growing. Now they are simply matching the competition with the same features with the "..but it's from Google" attached to it, which is similar to what Microsoft did with Hotmail after Gmail exploded. Ninja edit*: talking about the entry plan (free) One might argue that you do that when you need new users (they don't), but it becomes more reactive than innovative in the end.
- cryptoz 15y ago> every other webmail was offering 10-500MB accounts, they came with BOOM! 5GB and growing. At the time, I think Hotmail offered 2MB (free). Google upped the game to 1GB.
- aleyan 15y agoThat is correct. A few months prior to gmail announcement hotmail lowered their free offering from 5 MB or 6 MB to 2 MB.
- dillona 15y agoI truly thought I'd never see the day....
- Maven911 15y agoAnd here I thought they got their self-driving car productified..especially with a title like that. Imagine my disappointment when its just another "dropbox"
- solsenNet 15y ago"Let the bodies hit the Flooooooor!"
- franze 15y agohmmm, hmmm .. "Posted by Sundar Pichai" - isn't that the guy who convinced Googles top management in 2008 to kill - the ready for launch - GDrive because files are "deprecated", "ungoogly" and a "thing of the past" (according to steven levys book "in the plex") - wonder what changed since then (DropBox? Evernote? ...)
- adgar 15y ago> wonder what changed since then (DropBox? Evernote? ...) You're on the wrong track. What's changed since then is GDrive - what do you think all those involved were doing in the last 4 years?
- franze 15y ago>what do you think all those involved were doing in the last 4 years? well my sarcastic self suggests: 3 1/2 years of those 4 years probably: google wave, google buzz, google search wiki, google site annotations, google knol and - not to forget - google plus
- huhtenberg 15y agoWell, this pretty much exhausts the pool of people who don't care for the data privacy. On the plus side, those who do want privacy are still waiting for a proper solution, and it is an opportunity. (edit) It is really shocking how absolutely mind-bogglingly ignorant people are when it comes to their data privacy matters. How could any business person in a sane state of mind choose to share its data with some 3rd party company. Business plans, emails, everything. And Google actively promoting such behavior and endorsing ignorance - this goes well beyond "evil." It is one of the greatest disservices to the state of the digital culture of our times. So, yeah, great to see more of the same. Yay to the gDrive!
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- daave 15y agoWhat are you talking about? Users have complete control over who they share their documents with in Drive. How is it 'evil' to provider a better UI for what people can already do (email documents to one another)?
- camiller 15y agoErr... He is talking about Google having access to your files, not whoever else you choose to share them with. Any company that deals with sensitive data probably already does not use any sharing service. If necessary you could write a custom sync app that encrypts on upload to gDrive and decrypts on download. I have worked for a company that had implemented automatic encryption on emails, including attachments (at least with it's largest clients).
- daave 15y agoThanks camiller, I misread the post I was replying to. In that case, my response is that that sounds awfully paranoid. Earning and maintaining our users' trust is far more valuable to us than stealing some hypothetical secret business data that someone has stored in Drive, and new engineering employees (like myself) go through extensive privacy training to ensure we don't/can't do anything that would be a breach of our privacy policy. As it turns out Googlers have the same concerns about privacy as everyone else here, and we design all of our user-data storage systems with privacy as a key design goal.
- dhconnelly 15y agoIntegration with Docs. This is fantastic.
- pdubs 15y agoI'd rather it didn't by default. Now I have a ton of random docs from over the years synced...
- libraryatnight 15y agoSame here. Really annoying, actually. My docs is fairly well organized but there's also tons of random crap in there from over the years.
- vibrunazo 15y agoThere's an update for the google docs Android app that renames it to google drive. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.docs https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and...
- pg 15y agoAnyone know if this is the original Google Drive they wrote all those years ago and never launched, or a new thing they reused the name for?
- franze 15y agoGdrive was killed in 2008 (according to Steven Levy's book In the Plex after some top management lobbying by Sundar Pichai .. the guy who now wrote the blogpost) but as this was 4 years ago and a lot of waves have passed since then, I suspect - without any internal knowledge - that this is a complete new iteration of the same topic.
- EREFUNDO 15y agoI wonder how different this is from insync ( insynchq.com ) when it comes to syncing googledocs.
- andybak 15y agoThe main difference I can see is that insync creates MS file formats when it syncs (.xls, .doc etc) whilst GDrive creates .gsheet, .gdoc files which for me just open Google Docs in Chrome. Interesting difference. Google's approach isn't very good for interoperability. edit: and incidentally insync has failed to comprehend me moving a stack of files into a folder and instead created duplicates. Syncing is a hard problem with lots of edge cases (and on that note Chrome bookmark sync deleted 5 years of bookmarks)
- strongjas 15y agoDo not expect any consistency from Sundar Pichai. He told a group of engineers to focus exclusively on a product, only to shut down their office 6 months later.
- timdorr 15y agoIt's likely something new. This is very much integrated into Google Docs (Docs actually gets replaced with Drive when you opt-in), so it's different than just a storage system. Like a commenter mentioned above, this is all about replacing your hard drive and the "Open With.../Save As..." dialogs in your operating system. The previous iterations of this were simply a generic filesystem interface to the shared storage pool Google was using for Picasa, Docs, Gmail, and other services. This is way better.
- primigenus 15y agoHere's the most important paragraph in the blog post that most people will gloss over (because Google glossed over it): "Drive is built to work seamlessly with your overall Google experience. You can attach photos from Drive to posts in Google+, and soon you’ll be able to attach stuff from Drive directly to emails in Gmail. Drive is also an open platform, so we’re working with many third-party developers so you can do things like send faxes, edit videos and create website mockups directly from Drive. To install these apps, visit the Chrome Web Store—and look out for even more useful apps in the future." Specifically the app integration ecosystem they're creating with the Chrome Web Store is extremely interesting. There's documentation for developers here: https://developers.google.com/drive/ https://developers.google.com/drive/ Basically, you register your app against certain mime types, and then when users install your app into Chrome, they can now open those file types directly from Drive using your app, seamlessly. It's Windows' "open with" dialogue, except on the Web. That's a big deal, because while everyone expected Drive to offer features that compete with Dropbox, this feature competes with operating systems. I think it's a brilliant move that shows Google thinking ahead and beyond what Dropbox is doing.
- daenz 15y ago> Basically, you register your app against certain mime types, and then when users install your app into Chrome, they can now open those file types directly from Drive using your app, seamlessly. It took a minute for it to hit me how brilliant that is. I'm really interested if webgl developers will do anything interesting with this.
- knes 15y agoI'm really looking forward to see this because the few apps that used Dropbox for this where brilliant, for example CineXplayer on iOS to store videos.
- primigenus 15y agoSome more thoughts on where this could go in the future: This whole thing is great for Chrome OS and Chromebooks. Right now, using a Chromebook is an experience that comes with a lot of sacrifice. You can't really do much with a lot of the files that you're used to using on Windows. You're locked to a browser UI that limits your flexibility. But with the upcoming new Aura UI and Google Drive, suddenly you've now got an experience very similar to Windows. You have a desktop that you can put apps on, and you can open arbitrary files using any app that supports it and is available in the store. Now the distance between Windows and Chrome OS is suddenly very small relative to how large it was last year. This makes me very excited to find out what Google plans to talk about at Google I/O. I wouldn't be surprised if they introduced a new Chromebook model built around the coming together of the new UI and Drive.
- Groxx 15y ago>You can choose to upgrade to 25GB for $2.49/month, 100GB for $4.99/month or even 1TB for $49.99/month. When you upgrade to a paid account, your Gmail account storage will also expand to 25GB. That's... odd. I'm paying $5/year to get 25gb of storage across Docs, Gmail, Picasa, and I see it also applies to Drive (just checked) (which is basically Docs anyway). Considerably less than $2.50/month. The 1TB is less than 1/2 the price listed, and there's no 100GB option at all. Might there be pricing changes coming soon, or is this just a series of strange typos?
- ben1040 15y agohttps://www.google.com/settings/storage/ https://www.google.com/settings/storage/ The pricing changed today. It is considerably less attractive now. It looks like I'm grandfathered into $20/year for 80GB, but if I wanted to go up to 100GB the pricing is now $4.99/month.
- Groxx 15y agoThey're doing a lot more with the data now, so I suppose it makes sense. But I wonder how many people would choose the old option for 'dumb' storage. Currently, I would, though that may change in a few months.
- spinchange 15y agoThe dumb storage had far better economics for the user. I love Google products and services, but my immediate impression here is that it's a total step backward for users like me who were already using some kind of local sync app (Insync, OfficSync, etc) w/ paid-extra Google storage - just for documents. All the extras like the additional gmail space, GDrive integration with other products (but not our dumb storage) seems like ancillary stuff to sell it/lock you into the platform. Like you, I'm interested to see how I feel about this in a few months.
- bo1024 15y agoHaven't seen anything on the key question here for me ... how are they monetizing this? I'd rather not upload a ton of personal data to Google until I know how they're making money off of it. (Do they plan to integrate your documents into your search results?)
- marcusf 15y agoWell, there's always the pricing: https://accounts.google.com/b/0/PurchaseStorage?hl=en_US https://accounts.google.com/b/0/PurchaseStorage?hl=en_US
- folktheory 15y agoThey "monetize" it by charging money for use of the service.
- raldi 15y agoIt's so crazy it just might work.
- marcusf 15y agoI predict several Techcrunch headlines on this newfound "payment" option disrupting ad-financed services across the globe.
- 16s 15y agoYes, now they charge governments a fee to read your data as now they have more of it. This is a joke. I hope most people realize that.
- bo1024 15y agoNot the "free" version. Do you think Gmail makes money by charging for extra storage?
- laconian 15y agoYou haven't been looking very hard, then. ;)
- mmastrac 15y agoThe clock is ticking on Dropbox to lower their price. I'm paying $99/year for 50GB, but I'd be getting 100GB for $60/year over at Google. I'm already banging up against my 50GB limit - I may actually jump over to Google before my subscription is up just because the prices are so good.
- AdrianRossouw 15y agoi'm the opposite. i just need another 500mb, and i just dont need to pay another $10/m for a bunch of disk space i won't use. everyone i know already has dropbox too, so referrals are out. I hope the pricing of dropbox lowers soon too.
- akh 15y agoAs far as I know, Dropbox is using S3, which has reduced its prices several times, so Dropbox should pass that saving onto its users just like AWS is.
- stanmancan 15y agoFind one of the many "$100 of Adword credit free" coupons around, create an ad with your Dropbox referral link, sit back and watch your storage limit increase a couple times per hour.
- deltaqueue 15y agoI wouldn't recommend this unless you have specifically received one of these coupons at your email address. I used someone else's and my account was permanently suspended. Only after some negotiation was I able to make Google reverse the "permanent" suspension (a rarity, from what I have seen).
- stanmancan 15y agoIt wasn't hard to find one that I received myself. I've got coupons in magazines, hostgator, domain resellers... it shouldn't be too hard to come across one legitimately.
- jebblue 15y agoDoes Dropbox intrusively scan personal files, if not then I'd prefer to go with them since I don't want Google prying into my files.
- ch0wn 15y agoWhy would Google - or any other company for that matter - spend time and money on something as complicated and error-prone like that? They would never be able to sell it to anyone and it could ruin their brand substantially if it ever came out. I don't see why you would even consider this to be happening.
- AlexandrB 15y ago> Why would Google - or any other company for that matter - spend time and money on something as complicated and error-prone like that? This is a problem of technology. These tend to go away over time (e.g. Youtube's automatic copyrighted content detection). Bottom line is that the ethics and policies of the underlying company make me question the privacy of my data from the get-go.
- ahi 15y agoBecause that is precisely their business model for GMail?
- jebblue 15y agoConcur with ahi below _and_ because I read on the OP blog page under "With Google Drive you can", the third point, "Search everything".
- brlewis 15y ago"Drive is also an open platform" Working with select third-party developers does not make something an open platform. A documented API makes something an open platform. Even a command-line client for a popular web-server operating system makes something an open platform. Google Drive is not an open platform yet.
- lomegor 15y agoI'm not sure if this helps https://developers.google.com/drive/ https://developers.google.com/drive/ but as taken from another comment, it seems there is an API (or SDK or whatever).
- brlewis 15y agoThat's an android app API. See andrenotgiant's comment (sibling to yours) that links to a REST API. What I have in mind is letting people export photos into a folder to populate a photojournal, as I'm already doing with Dropbox. [EDIT] Looking deeper I see they're the same API. [/EDIT] It's a good thing I read HN. From the Google announcement alone I would not be aware of either API.
- andrenotgiant 15y agoHere's the API https://developers.google.com/drive/v1/reference/ https://developers.google.com/drive/v1/reference/
- brlewis 15y agoThank you, that helps. It would have been nice for Google to link to it in their announcement.
- Pewpewarrows 15y agohttps://developers.google.com/drive/ https://developers.google.com/drive/
- zach 15y agoSo if I have desktop software, can I put a button on my download page that instantly copies the zip file to the user's Google Drive from my own? If not, would anyone like to make one? That seems like a convenient option for users, not to mention the bandwidth savings.
- Drbble 15y agoYou would just share the file to their account, like you do in Docs now.
- tuananh 15y agoSay hello to Google Docs+
- pazimzadeh 15y agoI'm really happy that they skipped the whole beta/invitation launch.
- ryandickherber 15y agoThey didn't. My Google drive is "not ready yet."
- its_so_on 15y agoI'm not! It means hacking there is dead, and the whole company is run by marketing consultants.
- Lewisham 15y agoWhat on earth are you talking about? Google's infrastructure is so large it can handle the same sort of influx that Gmail would have generated, whereas back then they couldn't. Why on earth does that mean the company is run by marketing consultants?
- its_so_on 15y agothe same reason 20% time is dead and requires management approval. do I really have to spell it out? (google maps started as an engineer fooling around with ajax).
- EREFUNDO 15y agoI wonder how insync ( https://www.insynchq.com/ https://www.insynchq.com/ ) will adapt to this launch of Google Drive since they specialize on syncing googledocs.
- rkudeshi 15y ago[crosspost from the French translation thread - now that we have the official details, I think this comment is better discussed here.] So the things Google Drive has that Dropbox doesn't: * 2-factor authentication! * Comments on files * OCR - like Evernote, you can search against text in images (e.g. newspaper article) * Image recognition - if you upload a pic of the Eiffel Tower, you can find it with the search term "eiffel tower" * Web-based file viewer - 30 file types including HD video, Illustrator, Photoshop, etc. The OCR and image recognition are going to be killer features for "normal" people. And I imagine it's something Dropbox can't easily duplicate (unlike the other features). Then again, as a more privacy-minded technical person, the image recognition feature scares the beejezus out of me. Tagging faces on Facebook is one thing, but being able to semantically identify all contents of my images is really stepping up the creepiness quotient. Should be interesting to see how Dropbox responds.
- ConstantineXVI 15y agoCreepy, but IMHO necessary. We take the ability to search text for granted; there's no reason we shouldn't be expanding the same capabilities to images if we can.
- rogerbinns 15y agoWe should also have list going the other - things Dropbox has that GDrive doesn't: * Linux support * Headless (command line interface) * Public bug tracking and feature requests (votebox) Unsure about these * Shared folders I'm struggling to come up with more.
- jganetsk 15y agoGoogle Drive definitely has shared folders.
- icebraining 15y agoIf the API allows, I give it a week tops for the first two to appear on Github.
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- mrbill 15y agoCan't use the Drive app on the Mac through a SOCKS proxy. 8-(
- philfreo 15y agoRemember when Gmail launched and it was like 10-100 more free space than other similar services? I was hoping Google would have done that here, but rather it still feels like they are trying to play catch up.
- TillE 15y agoTheir free tier is unremarkable, but their pricing for upgrades is very aggressive. 100 GB for $5/month? Yes please. I think a lot of people who only use free Google stuff will now start paying them a bit of money for this service.
- numlocked 15y agoTo anyone else who uses a custom Google apps domain, it looks like Drive may not be available for a few more weeks: http://support.google.com/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2490030 http://support.google.com/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2... Edit: Not so. You can enable the "rapid release" track for your domain by following the instructions here: http://whatsnew.googleapps.com/choose-release-track http://whatsnew.googleapps.com/choose-release-track It may take "up to a day" for the setting to take effect, but once it does your domain's users should be able to opt into Drive right away from https://drive.google.com/start https://drive.google.com/start
- znq 15y agoHow does that work with the Mac client? Can you easily add a second or third account? Or can you only log in with one account?
- Karunamon 15y agoAlready on Rapid Release on my domain, already got it (about an hour behind everyone else, until then I got the "Your google drive is not yet ready" message.
- fsckin 15y agoPricing is pretty darn good. Any of these plans add 25GB on a non-Google Apps (just guessing, they like to screw us) Gmail Account which spills over to Picasa. I just might switch from a Free Dropbox to a paid Google Drive, despite them treating me like a business because I want to use my own domains.
- aresant 15y agoI recently upgraded to Dropbox @ $199/yr for 100gb to archive our digital photos. Yesterday MSFT skydrive offered 100gb for $50/yr. Today GOOG offers 400GB for $100/yr or 1TB for $256/yr. As a consumer with "offsite backup" in mind, there doesn't seem to be an inherently high switching cost to move services away from DropBox. As a result I think that they're going to need to reassess pricing strategy within the year. ref: Goog pricing https://accounts.google.com/b/0/PurchaseStorage?hl=en_US https://accounts.google.com/b/0/PurchaseStorage?hl=en_US
- Smerity 15y agoI saw the same pricing as you did but it _just_ changed as I refreshed the page a second time. 1 TB now costs $49.99 per month, or $600/year. This is a substantial jump from $256/year and means it's no longer an attractive proposition...
- Alan01252 15y agoSame, I should have ordered faster!
- celalo 15y agoIt was available just minutes ago!! I landed a 200GB space for $50/year just before they changed the pricing plans. I should have gone for more :)
- hornbaker 15y agoI think you got an "old pricing plan," which does not include Google Drive: http://support.google.com/drive/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=39567&p=butter_old_storage http://support.google.com/drive/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answ... I'm in the same boat, having had an 80GB plan for $20/yr for some time now.
- huggyface 15y agoI think you got an "old pricing plan," which does not include Google Drive I actually bought an 80GB "old" plan this morning ($20 isn't that big of a bet) after seeing the leak of the upcoming pricing, essentially trying to grandfather in a more favorable plan. While the comparison implies that the old plan doesn't have gdrive, I most certainly have it and have the full 80GB available in it. Further I retain the ability to renew the 80GB plan in a year without adopting a new plan. Perhaps they are simply saying that the people who bought the old plan got a lower price given that they didn't price in google Drive, however they definitely seem to be rolling that functionality in.
- wildmXranat 15y agoAnd the price is great! I will most certainly give it a shot.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- jimmar 15y agoThe official blog says you can buy 100 GB for $4.99 a month. If I go to my google accounts settings page to try to buy it, itsays 200 GB for $50 a year. Something is not lined up correctly. I'd pay $50 right now and get rid of Carbonite if I thought it would pay off, but I don't want to get stung paying $50 for the wrong type of storage.
- jimmar 15y agoWell, I went to Google Drive again, and this time when I clicked the upgrade button I saw the pricing consistent with the official announcement.
- boundlessdreamz 15y agoIf you had purchased 200GB for $50 you could have used it for Drive - http://support.google.com/drive/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=39567&p=butter_old_storage http://support.google.com/drive/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answ...
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- nik61 15y agoBland new gdrive logo is going to really annoy the UK Natwest bank which has had one 'very similar indeed' for many years.
- dsirijus 15y agoNot available for Business. What the hell?
- taylorbuley 15y ago"Our team will be on Stack Overflow to answer any questions you have when integrating your app with Google Drive." This is awesome thinking: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/google-drive-sdk http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/google-drive-sdk via http://googledevelopers.blogspot.com/2012/04/introducing-google-drive-and-google.html http://googledevelopers.blogspot.com/2012/04/introducing-goo...
- Lewisham 15y agoOn Mac OS X, the application doesn't respect symlinks. Does anyone have any ideas how I can get it to auto-mirror my Documents/ directory without me actually moving my Documents/ under the Google Drive/ directory?
- demetris 15y agoSymlinks are specific to individual devices; also, symlink implementations are different from operating system to operating system. So, if Google Drive or Dropbox were to support that, they would have to implement some very complex solutions (along with some probably very confusing interaction with the user) in order to be able to sync reliably across devices, even devices running the same operating system. You can always[1] move your Documents inside the Google Drive folder, and then put a symlink at the place Documents were. [1] I haven’t tried this with Google Drive yet but I suppose it should work. It is what I do with Dropbox, in Linux and in Windows. It works fine.
- Lewisham 15y agoThis appears to have worked; my CPU is going crazy from GDrive activity, which I am guessing is some pre-processing compression step from GDrive before upload. I am marginally more worried about whether the same reasons that GDrive didn't work right with a symlink inside it will result in other apps not working right with Documents being the symlink itself. We'll see, I suppose...
- andrewljohnson 15y agoThe pricing of this service is an eye-popper. I've avoided cloud backups for years because of Dropbox-like prices. At $256/TB/year, I can back up all my stuff, and never think twice. Game changed!
- Steko 15y agoI guess we should be on the lookout for the Comcast billed me XYZ dollars to sync my GDrive stories in about 2-3 weeks.
- Drbble 15y agoThe price tripled since you last checked.
- andrewljohnson 15y agoSo it did, make much more sense now :)
- checkers 15y agoIt would make more sense if you visit this link. http://techiest.blogspot.com/ http://techiest.blogspot.com/. All about technology baby!
- namityadav 15y agoThis is very aggressive pricing from Google. With Microsoft offering 25GB for free (although for a limited time, and only to its existing users), and Google offering 100GB for $5/mo, the online storage space is finally heating up. The tight integration with Google Docs, and (in case of Microsoft) Office Web Apps, and valuable features like OCR and Image recognition means that these companies are now offering services on top of their online storage that Dropbox doesn't. Dropbox definitely has a head-start today, but Google and Microsoft have the scale to offer better prices, existing platforms to tightly integrate their solutions with (Android and Windows), and the brand-power to pull people away from Dropbox. This may be the first time Dropbox has some real competition.
- rsbrown 15y agoAs a satisfied (and paying) Dropbox user, Google is pushing all the right buttons for me with this: - More storage space, lower price - Ecosystem for 3rd-party apps - Integration with existing Google services and two-factor authentication I like Dropbox and would love to keep using them, but they will need to respond strongly and quickly if they want to keep my business.
- dpcan 15y agoI'm on the exact same page. I'm going to give it a week. If I don't see a response from DropBox, because price is a factor, I'm just going to switch. I know it seems harsh, but the reality is, we're talking about more than just drive space now. This integration with my Gmail and Docs is huge.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- atdt 15y agoThis seems buggy. I created an archive subfolder and moved all my old Google docs there. This change (which presumably touches metadata only) took minutes to sync (on a fast connection) and failed on one file with this mysterious error: "Upload Error - An unknown issue has occurred." Also: no option to disable the dock icon or turn off the hypnotic animation while files are syncing. Ugh.
- Drbble 15y agoYou can hide any app's dock icon with a preference setting. NSUIElement or something. It's a setting in the app's info.plist or somewhere. This is a standard Mac technique, not an app-specific functionality.
- edw519 15y agoWhat might go wrong? (This is a test of imagination, not confidence.) Google might finally unleash GDrive and steal a lot of Dropbox's thunder (especially if this takes place before launch.)... From Dropbox's 2007 YC Application, http://dl.dropbox.com/u/27532820/app.html http://dl.dropbox.com/u/27532820/app.html I love reading old YC applications. I wonder if someday, they'll become the 21st century version of Harvard Business Review case studies.
- EREFUNDO 15y agoDrew Houston definitely knew the threats to DropBox. I'm sure he already has a plan to counter this. He's been ready since 2007.
- SODaniel 15y agoOf course Google Drive is not a surprise to DropBox but I still feel that a 'One does not simply counter Google' Meme could be appropriate here.
- thpoul 15y agoDrew Houston has an amazing sense of humor. https://twitter.com/#!/drewhouston/status/194837482490179584 https://twitter.com/#!/drewhouston/status/194837482490179584
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- EREFUNDO 15y agohaha.....love that guy!
- redthrowaway 15y agoSome of the responses are downright depressing: Vijay Vasu @gunshotdigital @drewhouston @Dropbox huh what? will people be able to search my files!!! #NOTCOOL
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- libraryatnight 15y agoOn the upgrade storage page it tells me how much space I use across Google products, which includes Picassa. With the inclusion of Web Store apps, one of the first available being Pixlr, I'm curious if Drive is going to make Picassa obsolete? It seems like applications working with Drive would eventually replace all of Picassa's functionality.
- amirmc 15y agoWhy do people here expect Dropbox to 'respond'? As far as I'm aware, their growth (primarily) comes from people inviting each-other and they're obviously device/OS agnostic. Yes, the pricing is way different but we shouldn't assume that's the major driver for most people.
- rkudeshi 15y agoSimple: Everybody and their mother already has a Google account. It's a lot easier to tell someone to use Google Drive instead of creating an account on Dropbox and installing their software and going through the whole rigamarole. Unlike SkyDrive et al, Drive is aiming right at the throat of Dropbox and Google has the money to make sure it succeeds (see G+). Dropbox doesn't have to compete on price (I don't think it's as big a factor as everyone makes it out to be), but they do have to think about improving the feature set. If Dropbox doesn't respond, they do so at their own peril.
- amirmc 15y agoApplying the principle of anecdote==fact, I have to disagree with the first point. I tried for ages to get my parents to use Gmail instead of Hotmail and failed miserably. Drive would actually be great for them when sharing photos. Agree with your other points though. The OCR and search sound like great things so yes, you've convinced me that Dropbox has to compete on features somehow.
- nixarn 15y agoApparently they've changed their pricing :( http://i.imgur.com/hLreQ.png http://i.imgur.com/hLreQ.png I want to be able to pay per year, not per month.
- EREFUNDO 15y agoIt's now a price war! good for consumers.....
- PaperclipTaken 15y agoTo me Drive feels like another part of Google's push to get everything integrated into one easy environment. The end goal is (potentially) noble, but I feel like they are trying too hard to push products out too fast, and a lot of the releases they are making feel quite forced. I don't think that Google and the Google userbase is ready for something like this, and even if this is a really good product I see it failing just like many of Google's other recent products.
- philp 15y agoHas anybody tried syncing extisting folders via symlinks? Using Dropbox this is how I prefer to keep track of folders outside of the actually Dropbox folder. Google Drive just seems to ignore them. Not being able to include other folders would pretty much be a deal-breaker for me :( Any ideas?
- nessus42 15y agoGod, I hope that Google Drive doesn't start following symlinks. That behavior of Dropbox is completely broken and dangerous, and furthermore makes it impossible to use symbolic links for what they're supposed to be used for. When symlinks are synced, they should be copied "opaquely", not "transparently". I.e., the link itself should be synced, not what the link points to. Opaque syncing of symlinks is the standard way to sync symlinks on Unix, and is what 30 years of experience with symlinks has taught us. Forgetting this painful lesson of history would be tragic.
- philp 15y agoTragic indeed. May the deities hear your outcry! Do you have any helpful suggestions on how to solve this problem by other means? I found the symlink solution to be quite elegant and never experienced any unexpected behavior.
- nessus42 15y ago> Do you have any helpful suggestions on how to solve this problem by other means? As others have mentioned, do the symlinks in the other direction. Or lobby Google to provide explicit configuration for syncing multiple folders. > I found the symlink solution to be quite elegant and never experienced any unexpected behavior. It's anything but elegant! What happens, for instance if you drag and drop a folder into your synced folder, and unbeknownst to you this folder has a symlink in it to the root directory of the computer? Nothing good can happen, I assure you, if symlinks are synced transparently! Additionally, I already heavily use symlinks for their intended purpose. E.g., I have lots of symlinks between files and folders to make it easier for me to find and navigate all my stuff. What happens if I want to have my folder "my-lifes-work", which is already a twisty maze of files, folders, and symlinks, and I want it synced between all my computers? If symlinks are synced opaquely, no problem: I just drop this into the synced folder, and everything is golden. If I drop this into a folder where links are synced transparently, who knows what hellish things result. Maybe you think that Google shouldn't give a rat's ass about the needs of fellows such as myself, since I'm not in the mainstream, but symlinks were invented for people such as me. Not for programs to hijack for completely different purposes. I actually did drop "my-lifes-work" into my Windows Live Mesh folder. Live Mesh is a lot like Dropbox and Google Drive. This actually works fine because Live Mesh ignores the symlinks. I.e., if A is my original computer which has the symlinks, and B is my second computer which didn't have "my-lifes-work" on before now, then after syncing, B ends up with everything that A has, only without the symlinks. This is okay for me, since I wrote a program to sync the symlinks out of band. This is less that ideal, but it's better than nothing. Oh, for the day, when stuff such as this will just work the way that the gods intended it to!
- sachinag 15y agoI did a quick blog post with charts and comparisons to not only Dropbox but all the other major players: http://www.sachinagarwal.com/google-drive-charts http://www.sachinagarwal.com/google-drive-charts
- jokull 15y agoAnyone see anything about selective sync in the clients?
- fishbacon 15y agoIn preferences I see "Sync only some folders to this computer" as an option. Don't see an option to move the folder though, that's annoying.
- bashzor 15y agoThis is the big Google Drive we've been anticipating and rumoring about for the past 5 years? Google Docs with a different label and icon? The icon is uninspired and un-iconic. Somehow this project looks incredibly rushed and simplified to me, but I can't imagine how Google would ever rush anything nor how they could have had too little time.
- epicviking 15y agoI'm curious how this will work with google play music. if we can now upload songs through drive instead of that terrible slow desktop uploader, spotify may have just lost a customer...
- antihero 15y agoAre they even planning Linux support?
- davidcollantes 15y agoDo it, there are APIs!
- philp 15y agoI'm actually on a Mac :) Should've mentioned that.
- jamesu 15y agoDoes anyone find the sharing to be awkward? For instance, i shared a photo and noticed it took quite a while to load for someone not signed in since lots of redirection was going on. I also shared a folder of pictures, but they simply appeared as a file listing with no thumbnail view despite thumbnail view being an option in the normal interface. Really, the interface seems a bit plain for now. Hope they improve upon it soon.
- AlexandrB 15y agoThe bottom line for me is that I no longer trust Google enough to use this. Pricing, etc. don't matter if the privacy of my data is up for grabs.
- johnpowell 15y agoI'm in the same boat. The the thought of installing this never crossed my mind. A few months ago I even set up my own email server on a spare Linode so I could ditch Gmail.
- mistercow 15y agoNot to mention, you never know when you're going to accidentally violate their TOS and get banned; the less you rely on them, the less that will hurt when it happens.
- saadmalik01 15y agoSomething's "fishy" with this whole Dropbox vs. Google Drive thing: https://twitter.com/#!/SaadMalik/status/194838393874677760/photo/1 https://twitter.com/#!/SaadMalik/status/194838393874677760/p...
- thekevan 15y agoAm I mistaken or did I see something which said I could buy a 80gigs of storage for $20/yr while the app was installing. Now that I go back to look for it, all I see are the same prices as published in stories.
- MikeCapone 15y agoHere's one thing that bugs me; Google Drive seems to constantly use between 2 and 3% of my CPU time. That's wasteful. If I was on a laptop, this would be battery time, and on my desktop, I want those cycles to be used for distributing computing science, not random background processes that aren't supposed to be doing anything when idle.
- bunnyhero 15y agoThat sounds bad. Since I am primarily a laptop user, I am very picky about which online sync and backup services I use based on the resource usage of their desktop clients.
- bunnyhero 15y agoFollow-up anecdotal data: Drive app on my 1st-gen MacBook Air is using 2-4% CPU, even when "paused." (For comparison, the Dropbox client uses 0 to 0.2% CPU when idling.)
- jl6 15y agoThere is a huge economy of scale working in Google's favor: deduplication. The more users they can de-dupe across, the cheaper their raw storage becomes. To compete, perhaps smaller backup services could agree "reinsurance" contracts with each other, exchanging lists of file hashes...
- creamyhorror 15y agoGood point. As storage gets cheaper, more people will be induced to store mass media in the cloud, which tends to be a lot more duplicated than personal media like photographs and videos. And that's going to be a big win for the provider with the best ability to dedupe.
- mangodrunk 15y agoThat's a really good idea. I wonder what the duplication rate will be given the scale.
- rogerbinns 15y agoDon't forget that Google also has a history of disabling accounts and providing no communication, support or other mechanisms to get it restored. Usually kicking up an almighty fuss in public if you have a prominent twitter/blog works but do you really want to be at their mercy for that?
- pgrote 15y agoThey've changed their existing storage plans and policies. I bought additional storage for my photos through Picasa. The storage was made available across all Google products. I had the 20gig for $5.00 plan. I say had, because I went to the Drive plan page and was told: * Your current plan is no longer offered. Learn more. The page redirect goes here: http://support.google.com/drive/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=39567&p=butter_old_storage http://support.google.com/drive/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answ... No idea why it is called butter. The excellent thing is that you are grandfathered in.
- lalmalang 15y agowow. i didnt realize what an aesthetic achievement the dropbox sync checkmarks were until i saw the google drive ones...
- bunnyhero 15y agoNow I'm curious. Do you have a screenshot? (I don't have Drive yet) EDIT: never mind, I can see them in the graphic on the announcement blog post. http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-OmO4AEPzKVE/T5bIDxKcD6I/AAAAAAAAJHI/msRIMa4kQpI/s1600/FINAL%2BFINAL%2BOGB%2Bblog%2Bpost%2Bscreenshot.png http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-OmO4AEPzKVE/T5bIDxKcD6I/AAAAAAAAJH...
- plg 15y ago2MB file size limit???
- bicknergseng 15y agoWhat does this mean for Dropbox?
- jashkenas 15y agoCan anyone (perhaps from Google) comment as to whether the OCR feature in Google Drive is just Tesseract + OCRopus, or something different?
- loverobots 15y agoTo those expecting Dropbox to meet Google's prices, they might not be able too. Google can easily lose a fortune in this until Dropbox and other small players go bankrupt.
- MartinCron 15y agoGoogle can easily lose a fortune in this until Dropbox and other small players go bankrupt. This is exactly the sort of thing that draws attention from the US Department of Justice. I don't see Google stepping under that microscope if they can at all avoid it.
- drcube 15y agoSo if I upload all my music to Google Drive, and let my friends access it... will the FBI send a paramilitary team to confiscate Google's servers at gunpoint?
- tlogan 15y agoI'm not sure if anybody mention this but GDrive actually does not download documents to your local machine. It just adds a json document pointing to file to edit. So what is point of GDrive?
- rjv 15y agoThis seems to only be the case with "Google" document formats (Google document, Google spreadsheet, etc). Every other file type seems to sync local files appropriately.
- tlogan 15y agoBut it is Google Docs... Meaning I still have to use some other tool to have offline access (and backup) of my documents? Isn't whole point of Dropbox to have offline access and (multiple) offline backups of your files?
- Achshar 15y agothose files will be opened with google docs web app. the web app itself can work offline. so your docs work offline.
- doctoboggan 15y agoHow do I enable this feature? Whenever I try to access my docs offline the page simply does not load. I am using a google apps account if that makes a difference.
- Achshar 15y agoThere is an option in settings drop down from top left of the homepage od docs. Also the offline url is https://docs.google.com/offline https://docs.google.com/offline. But you need to set up offline first from the menu i wrote about above.
- euroclydon 15y agoAny idea of the latency for HTTP requests? I wonder if it could be nice for storing and serving static resources.
- hornbaker 15y ago1 TB on Google Drive = $50/mo 1 TB on Amazon S3 = $125/mo (down to $55/mo for 5,000 TB) Being based on S3, Dropbox is going to have a tough time competing on price.
- etrain 15y agoUntil they switch backends, or negotiate with Amazon. While google has the buying power and made investment in running cheap, reliable datacenters, DropBox has so far made its investment in good software and user acquisition. Dropbox has a number of ways out of this, and they've got a healthy user base and plenty of access to VC dollars to fix this.
- morsch 15y agoThat's assuming Dropbox pays the regular S3 fees...
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- rogerbinns 15y agoThe S3 price is for unique storage. A lot of content is going to be duplicated across Dropbox users so they won't need to pay S3 for every byte, just the unique ones.
- BlaineLight 15y agoHow is this different from Google Docs?
- puffyresearch 15y agoWhat do you think of the naming? At first I thought it was an API for the self-driving cars...
- goronbjorn 15y agoThe price of cloud storage in the long run is $0, and we're approaching that point very quickly. UX, not storage space, is going to win.
- redler 15y agoThe help page for "Google Storage Plans"[1] is muddled. It now states that a base Gmail account provides 10GB of space, full stop. Unless they're rounding up from the old up-ticking 7+GB, this seems to be a policy change. But a little further down on the very same page: "If you've reached or exceeded the 7 GB free storage limit, all new incoming emails will hard bounce." It also states "When you run out of free storage space, Google offers a way to purchase storage space shared across Google Drive and Picasa Web Albums (which includes photos uploaded to Blogger)." But further down: "If you run out of free storage for Google Drive or Picasa you can purchase additional storage that is shared across these products. When you purchase a Google storage plan your Gmail storage limit will increase to 25 GB." This implies that a purchase of any storage plan includes not only the storage with that plan, but also an extra 25GB for Gmail. I'm hoping that's the way it works, and that this policy extends individually to legacy Apps for Domains accounts, whose free users currently have to be upgraded en masse to paid accounts to get any additional storage. [1] http://support.google.com/drive/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2375124&p=storage_overview http://support.google.com/drive/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answ...
- bad_user 15y agoI was already paying $20 / year for 80 GB of storage that I was using for backing up my photos on Picasa. Unfortunately the new plans are way more expensive, especially since my photo collection is growing like crazy and I'll end up needing much more than that. If there's one thing I hate about Google is that you cannot rely on their pricing. They did the same thing with App Engine. I'm also using the free version of Google Apps. Maybe I should reconsider.
- krishna2 15y agoWhat a nice opportunity that Microsoft squandered - they should've stuck out with the 25GB free option (Like they had for existing users) - that would make today's announcement so little. Marketing win and perception win! (just like what gmail did back in April 2004). After all, their data did show that less than 1% of users cross 7GB - so they should've trusted that and went along with it. Also, it would now makes sense for Dropbox to go even bigger - as in build their own data center, storage network ..etc (ala crashplan..etc). Being on top of s3 would allow one to be only as cheap as s3 can be.
- studio816 15y agoWhat's with the recycling bin icon, ew.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- pork 15y agoA future feature that might get me to switch: automatically download many years worth of Gmail attachments to my GDrive. It would be AWESOME to go through picture attachments from years ago.
- lifeisstillgood 15y agoDid anyone else think "no, they cannot really be releasing a car the drives itself already?" Just me then. I think it was the yes really that got me. Sadly, still no dropbox-alike for FreeBSD. Would swap in an instant.
- macrael 15y agoIs Dropbox just screwed on pricing vs. Google Drive? Their help docs say they still rely on S3 for storing all user data: https://www.dropbox.com/help/7 https://www.dropbox.com/help/7 They can't price lower than what Amazon is giving them, no?
- roqetman 15y agoEngadget is crunching the numbers (comparing the different services (google drive, dropbox, icloud, skydrive)): http://www.engadget.com/2012/04/24/google-drive-vs-the-competition-dropbox-skydrive-icloud/ http://www.engadget.com/2012/04/24/google-drive-vs-the-compe...
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- mark_l_watson 15y agoCost is not an issue compared to convenience. From 1992 to about 4 years ago, I used mostly Linux (desktop and servers). Now I have gone down the dark path of living in APple's little walled garden (except for servers). I don't care if Google Drive is a lot cheaper than iCloud: with OS X Mountain Lion and an iPad, using Apple's iCloud storage is just more convenient. BTW, with OS X Mountain Lion it is strange that for some apps the default storage is iCloud and not your local disk (although obviously you work from a local copy). That said, it will be interesting to see apps built on top of Google Drive APIs.
- zmmmmm 15y agoI agree that cost is not the main factor here, because the real battle is being fought in the free tier of all these services anyway. However I'm not sure iCloud wins on convenience unless you live entirely inside an Apple ecosystem (and even if you do, do you want more lockin than you have already?). For me convenience is about universality: which ever company gives me the best experience across every platform is the one that wins. iCloud fails because Apple has a fundamental conflict of interest in making your experience better on iOS vs everything else. Of course, they also can employ anticompetitive measures to ensure that all other services are worse on iOS so I guess it sort of evens out. Google has some similar issues but I think they have a much broader interest in making their service universal than Apple does. Mainly, I don't really trust Google to get the quality up to par ... so many of their services seem to get 95% of the way there and never get the final bugs ironed out because they are "good enough". But we'll see.
- spinchange 15y agoHopefully they'll fix sharing a public collection in Docs now. I have not been able to send a link to a docs collection that someone without a Google account can open and see in its entirety, like, since forever.
- urjitbhatia 15y agoWhat do these hardware control permissions mean? "take pictures and videos Allows the app to take pictures and videos with the camera. This allows the app at any time to collect images the camera is seeing." Doesn't this language bypass the point that the images/videos can only by captured when the 'user' initiates the camera app?
- adam-f 15y ago300 comments and not one mention of megaupload. Fascinating.
- sleighboy 15y agoYou're not alone.
- richardw 15y agoBeen waiting for this one for a while. But...doesn't feel right to me. It synced down my Google Docs files. Except it didn't. They're not, say, Excel files, which I assume the average user will expect. AFAICT they're shortcuts into Google Docs, which I didn't really need since I know where those are already, to a close-enough approximation. So now on my local drive I have two classes of spreadsheet. Real spreadsheets and links to my online spreadsheets, which kinda mirrors normal hyperlinks to online spreadsheets, so we have two classes of those now as well. I can't really predict what will happen if I download the file as Excel and put it into my Google Drive directory. I guess I'll have two files, but will my newly created Excel file be a new doc online? What will happen if I delete the local links? Created a text file in my local drive. Waited. Nothing appeared in Docs. Right-click the file to "sync", no menu item. Right-click the directory, no menu item. Click different Docs directories. Nothing. At some point, it appeared. That's a temporary issue and can be fixed, but those details count. Dropbox/Sugarsync feels a bit more predictable. I'll sync, that's it. I have a button I can push to make it do something predictable. Seems less magical. File sync is a square hole. Google Docs is a round peg. Feels like the reasoning behind this is boardroom-strategy-level, not user-level. Right now Dropbox/Sugarsync will keep my business. Earlier today I put one minute towards grandfathering a Skydrive account to 25GB free, just in case that proves useful. Hope I'm wrong and Google Drive feels more useful tomorrow.
- the_bear 15y agoI'm also getting a "round peg/square hole" vibe. Google has been telling us for years that the folder metaphor is outdated and we should use search to stay organized. So when I set up desktop sync I ended up with a folder full of hundreds of unorganized documents. This isn't Google's fault (I kind of saw it coming) but it definitely supports your claim that Google Docs wasn't the right vehicle for desktop sync. Also, what happens if I open an email attachment in Google Docs just so I can view it (I don't use MS Office)? It seems like that will instantly sync it to the top level of my GDrive folder on my computer, so I'll end up with a huge mess of files there. Same thing if I click a link to view a public Google Doc (I'm guessing). There's a lot to like about GDrive, but forcing it into Google Docs makes it seem like a really messy and inelegant product.
- kin 15y agoDo we know if Google ever tried to acquire Dropbox or was it just Apple? Sorry in advance if I'm just really out of the loop.
- biopharma_guy 15y agoIs there a way to use the Google drive without installing the software onto my computer? My employer does not allow me to install any software to the office computer.
- kin 15y agoWhat's the memory footprint like? I remember giving Microsoft Mesh a try since it offered 3GBs more than Dropbox. Goodness that thing had quadruple the footprint of Dropbox.
- Lockyy 15y agoWhen are they going to get a customer service department that is easy to contact and talk to? They have so many service based projects going on that need the ability to talk to a representative to get things fixed and there still isn't a way, that I know of, to contact them.
- Lockyy 15y agoAm I wrong? If I am can you correct me? It would be nice to be corrected if I'm wrong instead of just being down-voted.
- chintan 15y ago"I'm going to destroy Android, because it's a stolen product. I'm willing to go thermonuclear war on this." s/Android/Dropbox
- jrockway 15y agoThen he died.
- freshrap6 15y agoI wonder how affects those of us who pay extra for more space already?
- jmount 15y agoWoohoo! A place to store your stuff until you get your Google Account banned or Google loses interest (~9 months).
- alberth 15y agoQuestion... Does the "GDrive for Businesses" not allow for a shared corporate folder? https://www.google.com/enterprise/apps/business/products.html#drive https://www.google.com/enterprise/apps/business/products.htm... This seems odd because if you're a business, that would exactly be your need. I hope I'm wrong, otherwise I'll continue to use my Dropbox for Teams. https://www.dropbox.com/teams https://www.dropbox.com/teams
- drewjoh 15y agoYou can share folders between users in a Google Apps account. You just have to pay for each user to have the needed space to store the folder(s). If you're thinking along the lines of "buy 100GB for all 20 users in my account to share for $5/month"... then no. You can't do that.
- voxx 15y agoAnybody noticed how rare it is for OP to post? His first page of submissions are mostly from 3 years ago.
- karpathy 15y agoFew of my observations from this announcement: In Google's vision of the future, your computer is a thin client. There is no My Documents folder, as everything personal lives on gdrive. The Chrome app store becomes the new operating system. Apps will have access to your files, they will be able to search them, open them, and operate on them. You will never see the "Open file" dialog box again. In this world, the concept of a file on your local computer in some folder does not exist. Your stuff is simply available to you from the cloud from whatever computer. The abstraction or concept of a "file" or "folder" will fade. Our children will not know what these words mean. They will see their pictures in a web interface with location and time overlayed, completely oblivious to the fact that it happens to be stored as a .jpg file somewhere on google servers and an associated .txt file that contains some meta data about it. We are finally moving beyond (arbitrary) abstractions from mid 1900's. I like this future.
- ericd 15y agoI don't, because I fairly frequently don't have internet or cell access. Hopefully this will spur telecom companies to get their asses in gear, but I'm not optimistic, and that sounds like a supremely frustrating future of trying to get reception.
- nikcub 15y agoThis has been the theme for years. It is the argument that killed the original Google Drive and why Google are so late to the party. What they didn't realize is that you need a drive product in order to migrate users from the old desktop files paradigm to the new web services. I see Google Drive, SkyDrive and Dropbox as nothing more than a temporary bridge between the old world and the new world. I am already using webapps and web files for ~90% of my work, there is just a few little things that I still do in the desktop world, such as image editing. The opportunity here for entrepreneurs is to look at old file and app usage and work out where the gaps are in good online services. I wouldn't worry too much about providing the actual storage, since that is now a race to the bottom, and providing the operating system or app aggregator is also now a free business, the good business will all be in the web based apps.
- gaius 15y ago
- mmmmbop 15y agoYeah I think I'll pass. SkyDrive gives me 25GB and their "access any file on your computer (even those outside of your skydrive folder) from skydrive.com" feature is amazing. Plus like someone else already mentioned, having GDrive download hyperlinks is subpar imo. I'd rather get the doc or xls back, edit it on a client, and have it re-upload and convert to gdoc format. SkyDrive: 25gb (or 7 which is still > 5), cheaper plans, you can access your entire computer from skydrive.com, and it already has iphone/ipad clients. I really don't see a reason why anyone should use GDrive over SkyDrive unless they were a heavy gdocs user.
- skinnymuch 15y agoA lot of people would use Google over Microsoft because of the good will and reputation Google currently holds.
- mmmmbop 15y agoSarcasm? Can't tell on HN sometimes :-)
- skinnymuch 14y agoNot sarcastic. I personally do not like Google or their supposed morals, but I'm not "a lot of people" :P
- abrahamsen 15y agoOr uses Android.
- meanguy 15y agoMicrosoft continues to cling to some weird file extension restrictions regarding what you can do with SkyDrive. Leading to idiotic documentation notes like this: "(downloading any audio file type, and uploading Waveform Audio File Format (.wav) only, is supported)" http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/live/hh826545.aspx#fileformats http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/live/hh826545.aspx#f... Yeah, I get it. No MP3. But dozens of common file formats are missing and they just quietly added support for a few Adobe types. Yes, SkyDrive: the system that won't let you store an .eps file.
- sskates 15y agoIs there anyone who's actually used it and can comment on how good it is?
- iunk 15y agoWill it check if the file was already uploaded before so it does not upload it again? like Dropbox
- LyleK 15y agoSounds like a good start, but not a replacement for SugarSync. You have to put everything in their special Google Drive folder, can't sync existing folders. So I can't use it to back up configuration files that need to stay in their own directories.
- commononsense 15y agoGoogle does use S3 for some things. Is it possible they are using S3 for this? Perhaps Amazon gives Google a better deal per GB than they give Dropbox. I've sometimes wondered how Dropbox is not a violation of the Amazon TOS that pertain to "resale" of AWS services. If anyone can explain that I would be grateful.
- treelovinhippie 15y agoNew launches are never available for Google Apps domains. Fark.
- andrewfelix 15y agoNo one seems to be talking about the individual file size limits? I couldn't find if there were limit on individual file sizes. I have huge ISO files which have been an issue with other online storage services in the past. Any ideas?
- i386 15y agoWait, their blog says its available today but all I get is a "Notify me when its ready" button when I visit http://drive.google.com/start http://drive.google.com/start ? So its a soft launch for technology journalists then? What gives?
- mlreed328 15y agoSame here...
- robomartin 15y agoThings I'd like to see before I consider using or recommending GDrive: - A statement from Google regarding whether or not they will scan the data and files in GDrive to develop further profiling information or other data about the user - A guarantee from Google that GDrive will not be subject to account lockout in the event of account suspension due to AdWords/AdSense algorithmic (or human) triggers. In fact, I'd want that guarantee for any Google service. Here's what Dropbox has that Google cannot currently offer: If your work in AdSense/AdWords triggers a Google account suspension you do not loose access to your data with Dropbox. Being that the algorithmic shutdown can happen at any time, without notice, warning or recourse, it is a far safer bet to keep your data on Dropbox, at any price. The other guarantee you have is that Dropbox will not mine your data, email and docs to get deeper into your head and your life. Maybe Google offers this too. I don't know. I quit looking at their terms of service a while ago. I'll reserve judgement on that. I'm sure someone will tell me how this works. In fact, Dropbox, the best come-back to GDrive might very well be to offer email and document services. I know that this might be a huge undertaking, but I am sure that there are lots of people, like myself, who have developed a serious trust issue with Google due to the way they behave on the AdWords/AdSense side of things. This is an area ripe for an incursion simply because of what google isn't doing well: Customer Service. As I have stated on numerous posts in the past, I have zero interest in any tool outside of Google Analytics because of the shitty approach they have to customer-no-service everywhere else. Could I use gmail and gdocs? Of course. Would I pay for that service? Certainly. Why don't I? Because I have zero interest in loosing access to my data because of some shitty algorithm, the lack of a staged approach to dealing with account issues and an even crappier non-existing customer service philosophy. Why I feel this way (from about a week ago): http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3804260 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3804260 A thought on what could be a better system: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3804260 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3804260
- robomartin 15y agoSorry, this is what the first link should have been: Why I feel this way (from about a week ago): http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3849318 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3849318
- 15y ago
- Xyzodiac 15y agoSeriously Google? For a company that uses their own version of Ubuntu internally, makes a killing off their Linux based mobile OS, and is trying to carve a whole new market with their Gentoo Linux based ChromeOS, it's unquestionably sad that Google Drive did not have Linux support out the door.
- mlreed328 15y agoIsn't the percentage of Linux in use on the desktop about ~1.5%? It's a business decision. If I understand the percentage correctly Linux on the desktop really is an afterthought from a bottom line perspective regardless of how prevalent it is on the server or in mobile.
- mlreed328 15y agoNot trying to nay-say here- genuine question follows. Is the goal of this service ultimately that I back up all of my personal files, work files, collaborative files, etc so that they can be analyzed and an advertising profile can be created/enhanced based on the contents? Seems to me that this would make a lot of sense for Google. Let us store all of your goodies and cheaply. Don't mind us while we have a non-personally identifiable and algorithmically brillant peak at the contents so we can serve ads better and create a advertising/marketing/buyer permanent record of sorts for you. Again, not a conspiracy theory. Just wondering, because that occurred to me as a real opportunity for them. Seeing some comments below this has occurred to others.
- brainless 15y agoWill Google Drive Apps be limited to Chrome? Can anyone confirm if there is any way to run them on other browsers? If not, then popularity of Drive Apps mean will make other browsers become less useful. There are many SMBs or individuals who would probably shift to Drive Apps for many day to day tasks and use mostly Chrome for that. This clearly mentions only Chrome: https://developers.google.com/drive/apps_overview#installing_a_drive_app https://developers.google.com/drive/apps_overview#installing...
- bluedanieru 15y agoThis is something they could have done, and should have done, eight years ago. To suggest they are a day late and a buck short is a massive understatement. I'll stick with DropBox, thanks.
- akrymski 15y agoAren't there two completely separate use cases? 1. Syncing files across different computers: think git for docs. 2. Backing up files: no versioning necessary Price points for these should be different imo. I'd live with a backup that offers little redundancy cause there is a small chance that my backup and my laptop die at the same time. S3 & Dropbox are expensive in large part due to that redundancy. I only use Dropbox for syncing a small set of docs and live with the free account just fine. I should probably use online backup at some point but I just don't feel like the S3 solution is appropriate for this. I dont need my photos or music stored in 3 different data centers across the globe, and I don't want it to sync to all my computers either.
- Tomis02 15y agoI don't understand the name, I first thought it was a competitor for Nokia Drive. It doesn't have anything to do with driving, has it?
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]