Google Drive Launching Next Week With 5GB Free Space

An anonymous reader writes "The Next Web is reporting that Google Drive, the search giant's long anticipated cloud storage service, is set to launch next week. From the article: 'What's interesting though is that Google is planning to start everyone with 5 GB of storage. Of course you can buy more, but that trumps Dropbox's 2 GB that is included with every account. Dropbox does make it easy to get more space, including 23 GB of potential upgrades for HTC users. What's also interesting is the wording related to how the system will work. It's been long-thought that Windows integration will come easy, but that getting the Google Drive icon into the Mac a la Dropbox would be a bit harder. From what we're reading, Google Drive will work "in desktop folders" on both Mac and Windows machines, which still leaves the operation question unanswered.'"

Privacy?

[AmiMoJo]

Even Dropbox do some encryption, less than perfect though it may be... AFAIK Google don't scan your docs for data like they do with emails. How will it work with your private files?

Re:Privacy?

[Calos]

Dropbox has encryption, but Dropbox has all the keys. If you're worried about your privacy from the party offering the service, you can't give Dropbox a pass.

I think Ars ran an article about a service recently which uses better encryption. Or you can just encrypt your own files before uploading, or use TrueCrypt.

Re:Privacy?

[Calos]

This [arstechnica.com] is that Ars article.

Extremely Thin

[DakotaSmith]

I've got 50GB free at Box [box.com] and 30GB free on EchoFS.com [echofs.com]. Why should I care about 5GB? Just because it's Google?

MS SkyDrive

[El Rey]

MS SkyDrive is 25GB for free and no hoops to jump through. They don't let you store large files though. Seems like they could do better than 5GB...

Re:5 GB

[jader3rd]

5 GB is at the high end of current free offerings

SkyDrive is 25 GB and free.

Re:Privacy?

[Cow Jones]

• If you're looking for privacy, don't store sensitive data in the cloud.
• If you have to, avoid companies which have an obvious interest in your connections, your data, and your profile.
• If you need strong transparent client-side encryption, you can either use a TrueCrypt container (like olsmeister mentioned), or use an alternative provider which offers this feature: for example, SpiderOak [spideroak.com] or Wuala [wuala.com]. Dropbox, as you mentioned is not secure, because they hold your keys.
• Avoid the US and US-based companies for storage of sensitive data. The Patriot Act requires Google to give the DHS access to their servers, even if they are physically located in the EU. Wuala is operated by LaCie, a Swiss company; they guarantee that customer data will always be stored on their servers, which are located in the EU or Switzerland.

I'm not affiliated with either SpiderOak or LaCie, but we've researched possible cloud storage services last month, and settled on Wuala. So far, no problems.

Re:Google Drive

[Missing.Matter]

You must be pretty young to not remember a time when someone might have had to actually delete messages before they received new ones because they ran out of storage in their inbox. We're talking services that offered like 2mb for storage. Then Google came around and offered an entire gigabyte, promising to never have to worry about your inbox capacity again. This absolutely caused many people to switch to gmail. When hotmail and others realized this, they followed suit and started upping their mailbox capacity to match gmail's.

Re:Google Drive

[StevenBielberg]

In fact even Microsoft's offering, SkyDrive, is currently offering 25GB for free. Google is seriously lagging behind in this.

Re:rsync.net

[Skapare]

And you can secure it with encfs.

Gmail Drive Shell Extention

[flogger]

http://www.viksoe.dk/code/gmail.htm [viksoe.dk] Been in use for a long time... If this is as easy to use as Dropbox and as easy to share as that or as easy as google docs, then sign me up.

Re:Google Drive

[DragonWriter]

You may think that nobody is using it, but it is actually quite widespread service. Of course, Microsoft also offers it for Office and other business users with actual SLA, unlike Google.

Well, Google doesn't offer Google Drive at all yet. I don't know what the basis is for assuming that when they do, they won't offer it to to paid users with an SLA as they already do for similar services (notably including the Cloud Storage API.)

SkyDrive will also be directly integrated into Windows 8, which will most likely bring them millions of users.

Yeah, if only Google had a widely used consumer operating system with which they could bundle Google Drive.

Re:Google Drive

[Urza9814]

My Gmail account is currently using 2.5 GIGS. Before Gmail existed, the largest mailbox capacity that existed (as far as I know) was Fastmail, with 10 megs, with 1-2mb being common (hotmail, yahoo, aol, etc). I would generally overflow those in 6 months to a year. Granted, a lot of my gmail emails I could do without. Others -- hell, I still have attachments of hundreds of kilobytes, sometimes even megabytes, from five years ago that I pull up occasionally. For me at least, Gmail's storage capacity revolutionized email. 'email it to yourself' or even 'email it to me' was not a feasible way to transfer or store files until Gmail (Gmail was also the first, and still one of the few, providers to allow large attachments. Most providers still limit it to 10 megs, while Gmail is 20. Your guess is as good as mine as to what the limit was with a 2 meg inbox.) The search helps a lot too, though that's obviously related -- no need for search it if you can't store it. I'm a lot more likely to remember that I got a PDF of that two semesters ago from Ms. xyz than I am to remember where the hell I stored that file. Plus I've gone through four or five computers since getting Gmail, so files that I can currently just grab out of my email would have otherwise been scattered across six or seven hard drives.

Yes, users don't want a new email address. That's why I love gmail. In the two years before gmail launched the situation with email storage was really getting to be a problem, due to increasing internet speed and file sizes. I think I went through four email accounts in those two years. Some of that was due to storage, some due to spam (When gmail launched there was no comparison with the spam filters. They're still among the best. Went from a dozen or so spams a day to less than one a month) So...I went from changing addresses every six months to having the same address for about eight years now. The desire to keep one constant email address is exactly why Gmail was so popular. Maybe not for people like my father, who's STILL on hotmail, but for people who use email heavily that was certainly a large part of the motivation.

Re:Google Drive

[darkmeridian]

I use TrueCrypt on my Dropbox to make a secure volume that I just drop my stuff into. It's annoying to have to log in and stuff but it's still worth it for the added security.

Re:Google Drive

[CohibaVancouver]

Nobody is using skydrive

I like SkyDrive, but the max file size (50 megs IIRC?) means that for me it's dead in the water. I realize MS is concerned about people using it to trade pirated movies and music, but it also means the service is pretty useless. If I can't even send my parents a video of their granddaughter playing in the park, or singing happy birthday, what's the point?

No sync for that 25GB SkyDrive!

[zaimoglu]

Microsoft has got it all wrong with the SkyDrive. Firstly, there are TWO DIFFERENT services: (1) SkyDrive gives you 25GB of free cloud space but WITHOUT synchronization capabilities, so you need to manually keep track of your files, (2) a synchronization service that goes by the name of Live SkyDrive or LiveMesh, with only 5GB space. This second service is the one that can truly be compared to Dropbox. The problems with SkyDrive are not limited to this mind boggling confusion. The 25GB service does not allow you to upload folders. You MUST manually create your folders and only then can you upload your files, though you can select more than one file at this stage. Microsoft really expects you to carefully examine your directory tree and create folders manually!