8 ms·
Google Drive
- CountSessine 14y agoThe icon looks a bit like a recycling symbol. This is not a good metaphor for cloud storage. And no linux client.
- untouchable 14y agoNo linux client turned me off of full adoption (especially when dropbox does support linux)
- lomegor 14y agoWhile Dropbox does support Linux, I could only get the client to work on the Ubuntu distro. Not saying that Google Drive is better (they don't even have a client), but that Dropbox Linux support is not so good.
- sriramk 14y agoI got it to work pretty easily on Centos.
- jlarocco 14y agoI haven't tried this, and it's a bit old, but: http://v3gard.com/2009/04/using-dropbox-on-slackware/ http://v3gard.com/2009/04/using-dropbox-on-slackware/ Seems like the general idea could be used on other distros.
- ajross 14y agoI'm running it just peachy right now on Fedora 16 x86_64. Add a repo, install the package, and it bootstraps itself. It's quite clean.
- manveru 14y ago`yaourt -S dropbox` on Arch Linux works fine :) Been using their linux client since 2008 or so, and I can't recall having any problems.
- antihero 14y agoWorking great on Arch!
- Craiggybear 14y agoI just can't believe the no Linux client schtick. It makes no sense.
- albertzeyer 14y agoIt shouldn't be complicated to write a FUSE client, should it?
- zavulon 14y agoWith Google's legendary customer service, it's only a matter of time until someone gets their account locked, loses all their files and can't get them from Google because there's no way to speak an actual person.
- VikingCoder 14y agoIsn't the whole point of this to synch your files to your local computer?
- zavulon 14y agoThe point is to sync so if your local computer fails you can retrieve them. A situation could occur where your hard drive fails AND you're locked out of your Google Drive account.
- VikingCoder 14y agoCommandment: Make backups. If you violate this commandment, you will eventually lose your data. Commandment: Test your backups. If you violate this commandment, you will discover that you weren't ACTUALLY making backups.
- superchink 14y agoI think his point was that this could be a way to backup certain critical data without having to think about it… but that their history of hands-off customer service & support may prevent that type of use.
- zavulon 14y agoYes, those are nice commandments. But most Google users aren't nearly tech savvy to follow them.
- VikingCoder 14y agoThe existence of this new product does not make users more or less tech savvy. If a user goes from 1 copy (hard drive), to 2 copies, then it's a net gain for their backups. If a user goes from 2 copies (hard drive, some backup system), to 2 copies (hard drive, Google drive), then yes, arguably, it's a net loss for their backups, because they can simultaneously have a HD failure and get locked out of their Google account. But arguably, they could live in Joplin, MO and both of their current backups could be toast. Best to have three - hard drive, backup drive in a safety deposit box, and Google Drive if you like the convenience and access and cost, and don't mind the privacy implications. I don't mind the privacy implications. Google doing something evil with user's data would be absolute suicide for them.
- tambourine_man 14y agoIt must be crazy in the plex today. My Gmail is down, can't download canary, and this site is crazy slow to load.
- ciupicri 14y agoYou need to upgrade your Adobe Flash Player to watch this video. Download it from Adobe. It makes me wonder how serious is Google about WebM.
- daave 14y agohttp://www.youtube.com/html5 http://www.youtube.com/html5 The YouTube HTML5 player is still in trial mode, just not stable enough to use on the homepage of a major product launch. All in good time, there are definitely people at Google working on it :-)
- iscrewyou 14y agoIf you are one of them, let Page and his team(that would include you) know that they are doing a good job with the new direction the company is going towards.
- andrewhillman 14y agoTalk about cheap storage. :) 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)
- zgohr 14y agoWhere are you seeing this? I see 25GB for $2.49 USD per month, 100GB for $4.99 USD per month, 1TB for $49.99 USD per month (and a few others) here: https://www.google.com/settings/storage/?hl=en https://www.google.com/settings/storage/?hl=en
- rewtraw 14y agoSeems to have been a mistake, they already fixed the pricing. Old: http://i.imgur.com/wq9hz.png http://i.imgur.com/wq9hz.png
- mladenkovacevic 14y agoI just bought 80GB a few minutes before the new pricing page went up. When I go back to my Accounts page and click on Storage-More Details I see the new pricing like you, but under my 80GB at $20/year I see the following: "* Your current plan is no longer offered.Learn more" There is nothing yet under the Learn More link, but it says that my next charge will occur next year. I hope that means old storage buyers are being grandfathered in. Thinking about it some more, I should've gotten 200GB for $50.
- iscrewyou 14y agoThey are. I've had the 80GB storage for a few months and I got to keep it.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- glesica 14y agoAnyone see any word on a Linux client? "PC and Mac" is all I can find, but "PC" usually translates to "Windows"...
- diminish 14y agomicrosoft, canonical, apple and now google; won't any one of the bigger tech players buy dropbox instead of developing something new?
- Duff 14y agoThe asking price is probably too insane. If Instagram is a $1B company, than what is Dropbox?
- rscale 14y agoDropbox raised $250m at a (rumored) $4b valuation not long ago.
- rkudeshi 14y agoI hope not. Like Twitter and others before it, I think Dropbox is more likely to succeed and engender trust from users as an independent company. Dropbox has said that unlike iCloud or SkyDrive, they're the only ones offering a truly cross-platform offering, that doesn't favor any one OS or platform over any other. Selling out to one of the big companies (except maybe Amazon/Facebook) would sacrifice that. Not to mention, Drew Houston already turned down a 9-figure offer from Steve Jobs so I doubt he's interested in selling.
- no-espam 14y agoBut why? I'm not loyal to Dropbox. Competition is good for the rest of us. I get 25GB free from SkyDrive. I hope the others follow suit.
- jlarocco 14y agoI hope not. I don't trust Microsoft, Canonical, Apple, or Google to provide cloud storage. DropBox works great for me on OSX, Windows, and a couple of Linux variants. I just can't see Microsoft, Canonical or Apple going out of their way to make things work well across platforms. And Google Drive probably ties into Google+, which kills it for me.
- 14y ago
- no-espam 14y agoConfusing. It says upgrade to 25GB for less than $2.50/month then it says 20GB for $5.00/year. You would think with Google's budget they would have some person read the front page and the pricing page.
- twog 14y agoGoogle & Apple make outstanding marketing videos. They are routinely some of the best I see in any industry, and the clear leaders in the tech industry. The only "startup" I have seen that rivals their quality of marketing videos is Square. Does anyone know how much producing video like this costs?
- johnhartigun 14y agoThe Google Drive video is too professional and kind of boring.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- JoblessWonder 14y agoThe pure production costs (Animator + Voice Over) aren't going to be high. Anywhere from $1k to $5k depending on how much you outsource and how far away you outsource it. The ability of a marketing department/agency to distill the product, it's benefits, how it relates to the brand and why you need it is something you can't really quantify. If you watch Mad Men think of the effort that goes into a pitch meeting. That is what you pay for. And that can cost a lot.
- chriskelley 14y agoFor this quality, this estimate is very far off. Once the agency brings the concept to an animation studio to pitch, you'll have: • Design phase. The requires usually 1-4 designers creating styleframes, which bring the agency's concept to life. The agency will be presented with generally 3 or 4 design directions. The agency will approve a direction so we can get started. • Immediately after the agency chooses a direction, animators will start a short previz stage, where we take the timing for the spot (say, a 30sec commercial) and spec everything out in terms of pacing, timing, layout, camera moves, etc. Simultaneously, R&D will be done regarding any technological challenges executing the designs. In a commercial like this one for Google, this R&D phase wouldn't really exist, as it's very straightforward in terms of execution. This step lasts only a day or two. The agency will approve the timing of the previz so we can lock down the edit as much as we can. • Then we move into production. For a big client, this is usually is a team of 2-4 animators and compositors, hiring niche skillsets as needed (character animators, cloth/fur/particles, 3d modelers, etc.) This Google spot is probably 2-4 generalists, people who can both work in 3D and do the compositing. This step moves in review/approval phases, usually presenting to the agency once or twice a week, and the end client maybe once per week or less. Because of the good previz and the multiple steps of approvals, we power through these steps pretty hard. Most commercial jobs are anywhere from 2 weeks to 3 months. Designers cost anywhere from $350-$700/day, mid-level animators cost from $300-$500/day, senior animators cost anywhere from $450-$750/day. Usually one producer on a job, costing about $250-$350/day. Include studio overhead, margin markup, etc, maybe another 15-20%. For an agency job outsourcing to a quality animation/production studio, $50k is on the low-mid. I've been on $15k jobs and $4 million dollar (commercial) jobs. Can you hire a one-man band and tell him "make me a cool video" and pay him 5k? Sure. But buyer beware. You can pay a developer $10/hour and maybe you'll get garbage, maybe you'll get Digg. If anyone has any questions about video production or animation, feel free to email me at chris@mographstock.com. I've been in the industry for 10 years and am happy to share what I know with anyone who is curious. I'm trying to solve that "buyer-beware" step for small-mid sized companies. I believe there is a whole untapped market for top quality animation to be brought to small-mid sized companies and young startups. With increased bandwidth and the improved tools for remote working and rendering tools I've developed, I think we're poised to bring great stuff to the masses for much less than it costs now.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- ceejayoz 14y agoThe Google Docs integration is disappointing. Just JSON files that open up Google Docs in your browser, nothing useful to point Time Machine or some sort of backup script at.
- mshafrir 14y agoWhen I saw my Docs start syncing in, I thought it meant I would be able to work on them offline. I was also disappointed, but I'm sure this functionality will roll out down the road.
- ceejayoz 14y agoYou can enable offline access in Google Docs. Backup's the issue for me, though.
- doctoboggan 14y agoHow do you enable offline use? I have been looking for this for a while. I am using google apps if that matters.
- abraham 14y agohttps://support.google.com/docs/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1628469 https://support.google.com/docs/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answ...
- ja27 14y agoI was disappointed too. It's a glorified bookmark manager. I'd have thought it would at least give me csv and rtf locally or an XML format.
- jxi 14y agoThere is an option to enable accessing your files offline.
- 14y ago
- philp 14y 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?
- rkudeshi 14y agoIf true, that would be a huge omission. I've symlinked my ~/Documents folder into my Dropbox folder and now I rarely manually put anything into ~/Dropbox. I wonder if it's because they know people use Dropbox this way, but they want you to put your documents into Google Docs directly?
- Craiggybear 14y agoI use symlinks all the time in Dropbox. Works perfectly both in Linux and OS X. Anything that a) has no Linux client and b) won't deal with symlinks is about as useful as a chocolate teapot to me.
- Lewisham 14y agoI have the same problem. I've pinged my friends at Google to see if a feature request can be put in. It's really annoying that this use case wasn't thought about.
- molecule-eye 14y agoSymlinks are ignored. On Mac, aliases are synced as files, but the files themselves aren't followed. Huge disappointment and deal-breaker for me as well.
- rkudeshi 14y agoIs it just me or is this landing page pretty terribly designed (other than the video)? If I didn't already know what the product is, I would have no idea what I'm looking at. Is it a cyberlocker? Is it a Dropbox clone? Is it a social file editor? Heck, the landing page could almost just be describing the previous Google Docs functionality. The most innovative features, OCR and image recognition, are buried away with almost no description of just how useful they might be (privacy issues aside). The file revisions feature is sorely lacking in detail. Also, the amount of white space feels excessive. Was a second page for features even necessary or couldn't that have just all been on the main page? I'm sure the product is great and all, but this page is completely useless to send to less technical friends or family members. Edit: If you want to compare it to Google's other downloadable software landing pages: http://google.com/chrome http://google.com/chrome http://google.com/earth http://google.com/earth http://google.com/toolbar http://google.com/toolbar http://google.com/quicksearchbox http://google.com/quicksearchbox http://picasa.google.com http://picasa.google.com http://sketchup.google.com http://sketchup.google.com
- huggyface 14y agoThe landing page seems perfectly fine to me, and adequately describes the functionality of the service.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- adrianp 14y agoIt's funny that in the old Google Docs I was able to upload documents with no issues in any browser/OS, but it seems that in Drive I cannot do it using Opera on Linux (but I can using Chrome). Also, the way in which shared documents have been handled in the transition is just plain stupid.
- Kudos 14y agoI never find it strange when Opera doesn't work. It's not Opera's fault, web developers generally don't care about it.
- plg 14y ago2MB file size limit???
- CountSessine 14y agoReally? I didn't see that. Nevermind. Looks like I'm sticking with dropbox.
- singingwolfboy 14y agoLooks like the file cap is actually 4MiB, based on my testing. Still way too small.
- prezjordan 14y agoHow can that be? They were just priding themselves on "even the big ones"
- sonar_un 14y agoI ran into similar problems. a 32MB file would stop the syncing service completely and not resume.
- nubela 14y agoNo Linux support? sad face.
- skeletonjelly 14y agoProbably supports Linux server side :P
- dgurney 14y agoA key differentiator here vs. Dropbox that I think people are overlooking is the fact that you can actually edit your files and collaborate easily. The transition to cloud-based apps is underway, and Dropbox -- in this respect -- is about to be stuck in the past.
- dkrich 14y agoI disagree and I have no affiliation with Dropbox or have any vested interest in their success. I just tend to think that the optimal cloud solution is as close to invisible as possible while letting people use whichever software tools they need. I don't really see any single entity owning the software and the storage because no single entity can own the collaboration tools. I view collaboration and syncing as two distinct business lines without a whole lot of interdependence. Personally I use Google docs once in a blue moon, and even when I do, I don't see how Google Drive makes that process any easier. It may be that I just don't understand the product, but I don't think this will be any more successful than its competitors except for the fact that, when compared to Dropbox, it is substantially cheaper. But then again, Dropbox may be able to parter with Amazon to keep Google out of the space as much as possible and keep costs down.
- rkudeshi 14y agoI think you just nailed something exactly on the head that I've had a hard time describing to people. For me, the fundamental problem with a service like Google Docs is that it is the ONLY way I can edit a document. Whereas on my computer, I can open a .doc file (synced with Dropbox) in Word, TextEdit, OpenOffice, NeoOffice, or just about any other document editor. Doubly so for more platform-agnostic files (e.g. txt, jpg, pdf, etc). (This is also why, unlike Steve Jobs, I hope files and the file system never die.)
- tomkarlo 14y agoYou can download, edit and upload Google docs in a range of formats, including Word, ODT, RTF, etc. The biggest problem with the file-based route is when you have multiple people working on one file. You can't work on it at the same time (or you have a merge problem.) You have to sidechannel quite a bit about which version is the current "master". All kinds of issues that are solved by using a non-file-centric document.
- bretthellman 14y agoIt seems to be disabled for google apps?
- tree_of_item 14y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3884918 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3884918
- rjsamson 14y agoI think something needs to be updated in Apps admin panel - once I logged into the admin panel it was available.
- pgambling 14y ago"Your Google Drive is not ready yet" :(
- bvi 14y agoFrustrating, isn't it? I'd have loved to give it a shot, to see how it compares to Dropbox.
- NZ_Matt 14y agoI'm also seeing this. Is it not available internationally yet or are they just rolling it out slowly?
- pgambling 14y agoI'm in Houston, TX. My guess is a slow roll out, probably over a day or so.
- Zhenya 14y agoI wish I could select on android which folder I wanted Synced. Right now I had to manually share the photo folder from my gallery. (I dont want to use google+ photos)
- Zhenya 14y agoI am going to try and build this with Drive API https://developers.google.com/drive/get_started https://developers.google.com/drive/get_started
- sjaakkkkk 14y agoAnybody an idea whether it can hurt to put my Dropbox folder in the GDrive folder? That way I'd have a double backup for files in my Dropbox folder.
- trustfundbaby 14y agoI'm curious to know how many people like this trend of having to watch a video when you get to a landing page. Its showing up in more and more places, and I personally dislike it (I don't want to load a video and watch a clip, if I can quickly scan text and images and figure out if I should continue), but I wanted to know what other people thought.
- rkudeshi 14y agoI like both, personally. Ideally, I want to see a few images to get an idea of what the product is. If I'm interested, I'll watch the video to actually see how it works. There are things you notice in a video you'd never grasp just from a few pictures, just like how a few pictures can sometimes explain things much better than a lot of words.
- grinich 14y agoText is high bandwidth, but videos are much better for communicating emotion.
- timwiseman 14y agoI am fully with you. As a general rule, I process text much faster (and more selectively) than I can process a video. The only time I prefer video is when it is something that truly benefits from being demonstrated in a way that is cumbersome to describe in words. Working with software is almost always best described in words with some pictures, but I found videos extremely helpful in origami.
- jwr 14y agoI rarely watch the videos. Life is too short. If I can learn about the service/product by reading, that's fine, if not — I'll just abandon the page. If the service/product is any good, it will come back to me sooner or later via friends' recommendations.
- Liddell 14y agoSeriously life is to short to watch a 55sec video...are you on your deathbed?
- jawngee 14y agoSo now they have your social network, your search history, your email ... and now your files? I can't see how that could possibly go wrong.
- dmix 14y agoAlso notably, your wallet.
- tedsuo 14y agoDon't forget your phone, and eventually, your car!!! I give them points for being ambitious.
- Bapabooiee 14y agoTo be fair, file-uploading has been part of Google Docs for a while now (I've been using it to upload encrypted backups). The only difference now is that there's a desktop client and an SDK.
- yalogin 14y agoThe biggest things here are the OCR, image recognition and (hence deeper) search feature for your files. It would be really tough for Dropbox or any other competitor to match these. The Google drive also seems to be available on all platforms so looks like a very good option.
- timwiseman 14y ago"The Google drive also seems to be available on all platforms" Not yet. There is no broad based Linux support yet (it supports Android, which is technically Linux, but no Linux Desktop distro is supported) and iOS support is still in the works.
- joshe 14y agoEvernote already does a great job with ocr for searching images (along with your notes).
- ozataman 14y agoThe best thing about this is that it will finally force Dropbox to offer more storage at a cheaper price point. $200 bucks for 100GB of personal storage per year? I've long thought it's ridiculously high for mass adoption and so many more would be using it if the price was a bit more reasonable. For me: 1. I need much more space than 100GB - I'd ideally like a TB+ on the cloud. 2. The price has to be more acceptable. Say the cost of a TB hard drive on an annual basis. I'm not even going to talk about the likely $1000+ bill for a TB of space at the current price point. 3. I have to admit that Dropbox is pretty cool when it comes to a smooth, painless experience.
- luser001 14y agoAgreed about high dropbox pricing. But it isn't too bad imho. There are three inter-related concepts: backup (mirror of your hdd), archiving (extension of your hdd), sync (subset of files on multiple devices) and sharing. But if you're ok with using different services for different purposes, you can easily get what you want. To archive non-media files, 5 GB should be sufficient. To archive media files, pay $60/yr to Vimeo for video and $25/yr to Flickr for unlimited storage. For backup, pay $50/yr to Backblaze. If you try to use a service optimized for sharing and sync (Dropbox) for archival and backup, you're going to experience friction. Just my two cents.
- elithrar 14y ago> To archive non-media files, 5 GB should be sufficient. To archive media files, pay $60/yr to Vimeo for video and $25/yr to Flickr for unlimited storage. Note that Flickr will only archive certain types of media—you can't store your RAW files or other related stuff (presets, actions) with them. I believe Smugmug and a few of the other services do this, though.
- soupboy 14y agoI get the feeling that this is also going to force Amazon to lower their S3 prices. To store 100GB on S3's standard storage costs around $12/month right now [http://aws.amazon.com/s3/pricing/ http://aws.amazon.com/s3/pricing/]. Even if Dropbox were getting the best price on that page, it would still cost them $3.7/month to store 100GB.
- shuzchen 14y agoI like it. Well, I can't use it currently (my drive "isn't ready yet") but I've wanted a more feature-ful Dropbox[1]. With Google killing off tons of projects I love (latest being Picasa for linux, sad face) it's nice to see they're adding cool things in the meantime. [1] That is, Dropbox's philosophy is to create something dead simple that an idiot can use, whereas I suspect Google's product will be laden with options and knobs. I don't knock on Dropbox - I'm constantly recommending it to people that aren't tech-savvy (and it's one of the few things they understand and start using quickly), but I personally like those knobs and levers. Am I the only one here that doesn't think they're direct competition with each other? They're in the same space and all but I think they're meant for different niches.
- tiziano88 14y agopicasa for linux was just a bundle of wine and picasa for windows, you can easily replicate this setup yourself.
- sirwanqutbi 14y agoWhy is Google immune to Anti-competition laws?
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- tjmc 14y agoAnti-competition laws (in the US at least) only take effect where a company 1. has a monopoly or near-monopoly in a market and then 2. abuses that position to keep out or disadvantage competitors. The laws don't apply to Google here because there's significant competition (SkyDrive, iCloud, Dropbox and others) so no monopoly. And Google is also fine in markets like search where they are the dominant player unless they start doing dumb things like penalising companies for advertising on other search engines.
- thedangler 14y agoI tried it quickly. And couple things I have grip with. 1. I Synced my folders and a couple files showed up. I deleted the files I didn't want in my google drive on the computer, and they were removed from google drive. 2. I disconnected, And when I tried to sync back up it wanted my Google drive folder to be empty. It wanted to re-sync everything from the online Drive account. It wouldn't pick up where it left off. I stopped using it right away. That was my experience. I'm sure they will fix it. Unless I'm using it wrong.
- jarsj 14y agoIt's strange that the top comments here are blasting Google for things we couldn't care less about. I think it's awesome. Especially the search integration and ability to build apps. Dropbox is dead.
- inglondon 14y agoWhen running the Google Drive OSX application the CPU goes into overdrive while syncing my local files to the Google servers and pushes the CPU temperature to around 100° Celsius. Is anyone else experiencing the same issues?
- nextstep 14y agoApparently Google Drive isn't everywhere I want to be; it's not "ready for my account" yet. Is it really that hard for Google to make this available for everyone who wants it right away? How many people are trying to do this on opening day?
- twodayslate 14y agoI still want to be able to sync any folder - not just a gDrive or a dropbox folder.
- conradev 14y agoThe more I use it, the more I see it as a Dropbox clone. Not just the exact same feature-wise, but also technology-wise.. Google Drive's Mac client is written in Python, just like Dropbox's, for example.
- alastair 14y agoIt seems along with this announcement google have revised their storage pricing. On the old scheme I could get 20GB for $5/year, now 25GB is ~$30/year (600% increase) - 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...
- ramblerman 14y agoI wonder what this will mean for dropbox. I certainly like the micro-like pricing starting at 2.50 a month. As a statisfied dropbox user, with only ~200mb used, I don't need to pay for the service. Yet I recently wanted to show my support by taking their lowest possible plan. (I thought this would put me back 15-30 dollars a year). Yet the lowest thing they offer is 9.99 a month. I found that suprising
- douglee650 14y agoat first i was like, only 5gb free, what happened to massive leapfrogs goog. then i was like 100gb for 4.99/month F yeah america.
- aganek 14y agoThe next big stage of cloud storage is integration. Integration into 3rd party apps. Integration deep into devices (iCloud for iOS and Google Drive for Android). This was a "must" for Google for Android to remain relevant.
- dpres 14y agoHow is Google Drive different from the way Google Docs is meant to be used? Seems like Google Drive is Google Docs with a new name and an intro video.