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The prices they put of up for extra storage are exactly half of what Dropbox asks. Also, the 15GB free plan compares well to the 2GB Dropbox plan as you don't h

by recuter 13y ago

The prices they put of up for extra storage are exactly half of what Dropbox asks. Also, the 15GB free plan compares well to the 2GB Dropbox plan as you don't have to jump through any referral hoops (or quests), instead you get it right away. In the long run this is a commodity and Dropbox won't be able to compete. In the short term, this is a blog post about Google upgrading a terrible "buy extra storage" page and convoluted offering that consumers up until now couldn't bother to digest. It is an epic race between commodity and incompetence/bureaucracy it seems. Two of the most powerful forces mankind has ever produced. :)

dinkumthinkum 13y ago
Dropbox fills that niche of people that don't want robots trawling through their files so they can figure out what viagra or underwater mortgage refinancing ads to display, though. :) Anyway, I think you are wrong. There are plenty of people not comfortable with storing their data on Google for a myriad of reasons so I don't think this has effectively shut down the online storage market.
- recuter 13y ago
  Privacy concerns outside our echo chamber are not such a big deal as you imply. To wit, the hundreds of millions of Gmail and Facebook users - I should think the amount of people who are aware of this issue AND care enough to vote with their wallet is negligible. (Not to mention that Dropbox or cloud anything is hardly better, it came out recently that Dropbox employees can look at your files just like Facebook employees can glance at your profile)
  - BrianEatWorld 13y ago
    I think that even ignoring privacy concerns, theres a quality difference between Dropbox and Google that Google is currently losing. Our team is only 10 employees, distributed across two offices, but the number of times that I have seen email attachments for docs that were supposed to be synced in Drive multiple hours ago isn't trivial and has led to most of the team returning to Dropbox despite the space limitations. As is, if a doc isn't created in the Google environment (Google Docs, Calendar, etc.) then it will reside in Dropbox.
  - dinkumthinkum 13y ago
    You say that but yet Microsoft has created a whole marketing campaign around this. It's a humorous to think no one really cares about privacy. I think that is more the kind of attitude in our echo chamber than the other (that no one really cares about privacy).
- gillianseed 13y ago
  There will always be alternatives which you pay hard cash for, but if you want 'free' services you most likely end up paying through advertising. The majority of people seem to find their internet habits being sold as a data point to advertisers and getting targeted ads is an ok 'price to pay' for gmail/outlook/google drive/skydrive/dropbox etc et al. Again if you don't like this deal there is always someone willing to take your money in exchange for such priviledge.
bad_user 13y ago
Google also has a history of raising prices and/or getting rid of freebies for paid services, once the product is considered stable (read popular), with the Maps API, Google App Engine and Google Apps serving as examples. Sorry, but I'm not falling for that again.
- magicalist 13y ago
  It's good to have diversity in the market, and you should use whatever service you want (I don't really see anything in the article to suggest that merging storage quotas is a benefit over dropbox, anyway, it's just a simplification of split storage limits that I know has confused at least some people), but you're reaching with those examples. Both the Maps API quota and the AppEngine price changes were not consumer product changes, and the free Google Apps account change wasn't taking anything away from anyone, it's just no longer offering a free tier for future consumers. The only people with room to complain on that one were the people on HN that day talking about having clients in the pipeline that they'd now have to add an extra charge for because there was no warning, but if you already have a free account, there's nothing to "fall for" but making an assumption that you would be able to sign up for more free accounts.
  - bad_user 13y ago
    I am not railing against diversity in the market. I like diversity and I am glad they released Google Drive. My response was to the parent questioning slightly more expensive alternatives, not to the piece of news itself. As to your reply, as I was already mentioning, Google Storage itself was cheaper prior to Drive and I was using it for Picasa. I'm still on the old plan, paying a yearly $20 for 80 GB of storage (because I may use it for Docs and because I was too lazy to pull some photos out of Picasa). You can always come up with a rationale like the Maps API and App Engine not being "consumer products", however Google is the only company I have a relationship with that increases prices instead of decreasing them and that takes away freebies. Amazon's AWS services are also not consumer products and they get cheaper over time. Amazon's freebies have a clear expiration date (like the 1-year free tier, which you know lasts for only 1 year, because it's in the freaking title). Speaking of App Engine, they not only changed their prices, they changed their pricing scheme, breaking the original promise of the service. I could rail endlessly about how App Engine sucks, but that's for another discussion. Speaking of Google Apps - you view it as a special offer. I view it as a broken promise, because they never mentioned that they are going to pull this option after releasing it. First of all, I ended up saying to several small business owners "create an account on Google Apps, it's both free and awesome". Now their stuff is tied to Google Apps. For now their accounts are free, but you never know. They are also subject to Google's TOS, so they could get locked out of their accounts by a script that calculated a probability for TOS violations. I'm also bothered by the lock-in Google does with their @gmail.com email addresses they require for Google Accounts. Google Apps was a way out, even for normal users. Not anymore.
aresant 13y ago
"In the long run this is a commodity and Dropbox won't be able to compete" Cloud storage is ALREADY a commodity, so much so that Dropbox doesn't actually host any files, they use Amazon's S3 (1)! (1) https://www.dropbox.com/help/7/en https://www.dropbox.com/help/7/en
- bloke8888 13y ago
  Amazon Cloud Drive also happens to cost less than Google drive. $59.88 per year for 100 GB on Google Drive vs $50 for Amazon Cloud Drive. Cloud drive also has a sync app.
simonh 13y ago
I don't think it's a simple as that. Firstly, Drive is still catching up with Dropbox's software. I tried to move from Dropbox to using Drive and I couldn't. Drive just isn't reliable enough. I've had problems with several files that wouldn't sync until I updated/restarted the Drive client. They'll fix these issues, but I still don't trust it as much. Secondly, Dropbox offers services Drive doesn't, such as it's API for iOS and Android apps. I use the iOS App with several other apps and it's not clear either if Google will ever offer an API like that, or if they do whether independent developers will adopt it the same way they have with Dropbox. I think Dropbox have established a pretty secure niche for now. If I were them I'd definitely be concerned about Drive, and it's possible they'll get squeezed out if they don't continue to innovate (I hate typing that word, it's so over-used), but Dropbox must have always known that if they stood still they'd be roadkill eventually.
- fpgeek 13y ago
  Um, I'm not saying Drive offers everything Dropbox does, but on the subject of APIs this: https://developers.google.com/drive/ https://developers.google.com/drive/ seems pretty reasonable.
jpalomaki 13y ago
With Dropbox I'm not really paying for the storage. I'm paying for the really smooth and fast syncing experience. The price per gigabyte is quite heavy, but with my Dropbox usage the most costs for Dropbox are probably not coming from the actual storage but from the network traffic and computing resources needed to make the sync work.
abrahamsen 13y ago
People seem to forget about the network effect when discussing DropBox. The main reason I continue to use DropBox over cheaper alternatives, is that most of my collaborators in other companies have DropBox, and we use shared folders to exchange files. DropBox was the first solution simple enough to make them switch from using mail attachments.

by recuter 13y ago

dinkumthinkum 13y ago

Dropbox fills that niche of people that don't want robots trawling through their files so they can figure out what viagra or underwater mortgage refinancing ads to display, though. :) Anyway, I think you are wrong. There are plenty of people not comfortable with storing their data on Google for a myriad of reasons so I don't think this has effectively shut down the online storage market.

recuter 13y ago
Privacy concerns outside our echo chamber are not such a big deal as you imply. To wit, the hundreds of millions of Gmail and Facebook users - I should think the amount of people who are aware of this issue AND care enough to vote with their wallet is negligible. (Not to mention that Dropbox or cloud anything is hardly better, it came out recently that Dropbox employees can look at your files just like Facebook employees can glance at your profile)
- BrianEatWorld 13y ago
  I think that even ignoring privacy concerns, theres a quality difference between Dropbox and Google that Google is currently losing. Our team is only 10 employees, distributed across two offices, but the number of times that I have seen email attachments for docs that were supposed to be synced in Drive multiple hours ago isn't trivial and has led to most of the team returning to Dropbox despite the space limitations. As is, if a doc isn't created in the Google environment (Google Docs, Calendar, etc.) then it will reside in Dropbox.
- dinkumthinkum 13y ago
  You say that but yet Microsoft has created a whole marketing campaign around this. It's a humorous to think no one really cares about privacy. I think that is more the kind of attitude in our echo chamber than the other (that no one really cares about privacy).
gillianseed 13y ago
There will always be alternatives which you pay hard cash for, but if you want 'free' services you most likely end up paying through advertising. The majority of people seem to find their internet habits being sold as a data point to advertisers and getting targeted ads is an ok 'price to pay' for gmail/outlook/google drive/skydrive/dropbox etc et al. Again if you don't like this deal there is always someone willing to take your money in exchange for such priviledge.

bad_user 13y ago

Google also has a history of raising prices and/or getting rid of freebies for paid services, once the product is considered stable (read popular), with the Maps API, Google App Engine and Google Apps serving as examples. Sorry, but I'm not falling for that again.

magicalist 13y ago
It's good to have diversity in the market, and you should use whatever service you want (I don't really see anything in the article to suggest that merging storage quotas is a benefit over dropbox, anyway, it's just a simplification of split storage limits that I know has confused at least some people), but you're reaching with those examples. Both the Maps API quota and the AppEngine price changes were not consumer product changes, and the free Google Apps account change wasn't taking anything away from anyone, it's just no longer offering a free tier for future consumers. The only people with room to complain on that one were the people on HN that day talking about having clients in the pipeline that they'd now have to add an extra charge for because there was no warning, but if you already have a free account, there's nothing to "fall for" but making an assumption that you would be able to sign up for more free accounts.
- bad_user 13y ago
  I am not railing against diversity in the market. I like diversity and I am glad they released Google Drive. My response was to the parent questioning slightly more expensive alternatives, not to the piece of news itself. As to your reply, as I was already mentioning, Google Storage itself was cheaper prior to Drive and I was using it for Picasa. I'm still on the old plan, paying a yearly $20 for 80 GB of storage (because I may use it for Docs and because I was too lazy to pull some photos out of Picasa). You can always come up with a rationale like the Maps API and App Engine not being "consumer products", however Google is the only company I have a relationship with that increases prices instead of decreasing them and that takes away freebies. Amazon's AWS services are also not consumer products and they get cheaper over time. Amazon's freebies have a clear expiration date (like the 1-year free tier, which you know lasts for only 1 year, because it's in the freaking title). Speaking of App Engine, they not only changed their prices, they changed their pricing scheme, breaking the original promise of the service. I could rail endlessly about how App Engine sucks, but that's for another discussion. Speaking of Google Apps - you view it as a special offer. I view it as a broken promise, because they never mentioned that they are going to pull this option after releasing it. First of all, I ended up saying to several small business owners "create an account on Google Apps, it's both free and awesome". Now their stuff is tied to Google Apps. For now their accounts are free, but you never know. They are also subject to Google's TOS, so they could get locked out of their accounts by a script that calculated a probability for TOS violations. I'm also bothered by the lock-in Google does with their @gmail.com email addresses they require for Google Accounts. Google Apps was a way out, even for normal users. Not anymore.

aresant 13y ago

"In the long run this is a commodity and Dropbox won't be able to compete" Cloud storage is ALREADY a commodity, so much so that Dropbox doesn't actually host any files, they use Amazon's S3 (1)! (1) https://www.dropbox.com/help/7/en https://www.dropbox.com/help/7/en

bloke8888 13y ago
Amazon Cloud Drive also happens to cost less than Google drive. $59.88 per year for 100 GB on Google Drive vs $50 for Amazon Cloud Drive. Cloud drive also has a sync app.

simonh 13y ago

I don't think it's a simple as that. Firstly, Drive is still catching up with Dropbox's software. I tried to move from Dropbox to using Drive and I couldn't. Drive just isn't reliable enough. I've had problems with several files that wouldn't sync until I updated/restarted the Drive client. They'll fix these issues, but I still don't trust it as much. Secondly, Dropbox offers services Drive doesn't, such as it's API for iOS and Android apps. I use the iOS App with several other apps and it's not clear either if Google will ever offer an API like that, or if they do whether independent developers will adopt it the same way they have with Dropbox. I think Dropbox have established a pretty secure niche for now. If I were them I'd definitely be concerned about Drive, and it's possible they'll get squeezed out if they don't continue to innovate (I hate typing that word, it's so over-used), but Dropbox must have always known that if they stood still they'd be roadkill eventually.

fpgeek 13y ago
Um, I'm not saying Drive offers everything Dropbox does, but on the subject of APIs this: https://developers.google.com/drive/ https://developers.google.com/drive/ seems pretty reasonable.

jpalomaki 13y ago

With Dropbox I'm not really paying for the storage. I'm paying for the really smooth and fast syncing experience. The price per gigabyte is quite heavy, but with my Dropbox usage the most costs for Dropbox are probably not coming from the actual storage but from the network traffic and computing resources needed to make the sync work.

abrahamsen 13y ago

People seem to forget about the network effect when discussing DropBox. The main reason I continue to use DropBox over cheaper alternatives, is that most of my collaborators in other companies have DropBox, and we use shared folders to exchange files. DropBox was the first solution simple enough to make them switch from using mail attachments.