Google Drive Launching Next Week With 5GB Free Space 265
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.'"
Google Drive (Score:5, Insightful)
I also fail to see why this would get any good amount of users even if Google did advertise it correctly - unlike their search engine, gmail and youtube, cloud storage is nothing new. There are tons of companies offering their services with ridiculously low profit margins. Hell, most of them are free for home users, and I really wouldn't trust Google with my company or work data - I would use a professional hosting service with SLA and company that has no need to mine my data.
Lastly, but even more so importantly, putting everything for Google to datamine and crawl is just stupid. They already know so much - hell, they track Slashdot too. On top of that Google has serious problem with anti-competition regulators and this is just going to make those issues worse when Dropbox and other companies will demand Google to stop leveraging their search engine against them. They already have this problem in other markets.
Re:Google Drive (Score:4, Insightful)
>> unlike their search engine, gmail and youtube, cloud storage is nothing new.
Because email was a new phenomenon when Gmail launched?
Re:Google Drive (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Google Drive (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
No sync for that 25GB SkyDrive! (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Google Drive (Score:5, Informative)
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?
Re:Google Drive (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow, that's really smart of them, imposing a limit on file size to stop piracy. Cause nobody's gonna try splitting their files to get around that limit, nor would they even imagine using encryption to hide the contents of the files.
That is about as useful as DRM. Sucks for the people who use the service legitimately, easily bypassed for those who want to circumvent it anyways.
Re:Google Drive (Score:5, Informative)
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.)
Yeah, if only Google had a widely used consumer operating system with which they could bundle Google Drive.
Re:Google Drive (Score:4, Interesting)
I wouldn't be surprised. As it is, I pay Google for storage that's shared across all of their services. Picasa, Docs, Gmail, etc. all share the one 20GB I pay Google for at $5/yr.
Their current pricing for storage, in addition to the free storage quota:
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)
2 TB ($512.00 USD per year)
4 TB ($1,024.00 USD per year)
8 TB ($2,048.00 USD per year)
16 TB ($4,096.00 USD per year)
Re:Google Drive (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, and for the same reasons their e-mail service never caught on.
Re:Google Drive (Score:5, Insightful)
However, it doesn't seem like this is the case with Google Drive. It actually looks like they don't bring anything new or innovative to the table either, and in fact, might have a worse service than Dropbox and other companies have (not even having good software for OS X or Linux). They also don't offer that much more space either.
The cloud storage landscape and internet in 2012 is vastly different from email and Gmail when it launched.
Re:Google Drive (Score:4, Insightful)
Email is not storage. Users don't want a new email address. That's why hotmail and yahoo still exist at all.
Re:Google Drive (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Google Drive (Score:4, Informative)
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: (Score:3)
I don't trust Google, so I only use it as a spam catcher and for work voicemail transcribed.
Using 159 MB of your 7701 MB
I wouldn't trust them for storage as well, unless I encrypted everything before storing it.
I am still using my same ISP for email for the last 11 years. If my imap gets full, I down load and archive it locally.
Re: (Score:3)
http://web.archive.org/web/20021202101745/http://mail.yahoo.com/ [archive.org]
December 2002 archive of Yahoo's own site states:
Free 4MB storage - up to twice as much as other free email providers!
Around '04 they moved that up to 100 megs to compete with Gmail, then went unlimited some time after that. Are you sure you didn't have a paid 'Yahoo! Mail Plus' account? Those apparently had 25 megs starting in 1999.
Re: (Score:3)
"Yet, Gmail still didn't win Hotmail or Yahoo which to date are the two largest email providers on planet."
Yet, Yahoo and Hotmail still didn't win AOL users which to date still has a huge number of users.
Yes, they do. It makes most tech people weep, but I meet someone in business weekly that has a @AOL address.
Re: (Score:3)
The name of Google.
I tried to get my family on Dropbox. I even offered to answer all their surveys and upload video data in order to get another 5gb. The family needed a way to send large files and Dropbox, with it's Android integration, was the answer. They couldn't arsed and still burn CDRs for people. We have 50mbit/5mbit in this house. *facepalm*.
Google can offer 5gb from Google with a simple single click from a Google webpage like Google Play.
Re:Google Drive (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, and for the same reasons their e-mail service never caught on.
Speaking of Gmail, currently it says I have 7.7 GB of free storage there. Can't they at least match this with their new Cloud drive? I already use Gmail for temporary storage all the time - just attach files to draft emails and I can access them from anywhere.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, and for the same reasons their e-mail service never caught on.
Or their calendar, their docs, their OS, their phones, or their social med... nevermind, got carried away there.
Re:Google Drive (Score:5, Insightful)
It's probably targeting Apple's iCloud. It's nice to be able to tell developers "Here's a place to store data. It will automatically be backed up and synchronized between the user's devices. You won't have to run your own servers and get the user to trust you with their data. You won't even have to ask the user for special credentials or get them to sign up for Dropbox or anything like that. It just works."
Re: (Score:3)
I'd imagine Google Drive would be tied to Google accounts, and it's safe to assume most Android users will have Google accounts.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Google Drive (Score:5, Insightful)
Lastly, but even more so importantly, putting everything for Google to datamine and crawl is just stupid.
The advantage of a dumb data store is that you can layer some encryption transparently. Even something simple like putting a password on a RAR file is enough to prevent such snooping.
That said, I probably wouldn't use it for anything important anyway.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Google Drive (Score:5, Informative)
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: (Score:3, Interesting)
I was doing truecrypt but didn't like the extra steps to open a file, dump stuff in, etc. I gave boxcryptor http://www.boxcryptor.com/ [boxcryptor.com] a whirl and have been very happy with it. It adds on right to dropbox. It's free (up to 2 gig of encryption) and a one time fee for unlimited. I tried spider oak too but didn't like how it all worked and I'm not a fan of re-occuring costs.
Re: (Score:2)
I think it could be a useful backup for /dev/random
Right now I use an USB key for that (no, really, I do), but it would be nice to have a larger entropy pool I can read from anywhere. If it didn't require a Google account and accepting tracking cookies in my browser, that is.
Of course, if everybody used it for this, Google would probably close the service, as compression and dedup would end up consuming extra space instead of saving space.
Re:Google Drive (Score:5, Interesting)
The attraction of cloud storage for end users is integration with other services - think iCloud. Google already has cloud storage for music, which is pretty neat because you can stream directly from it on any Android device (and optionally precache some files locally, while still having auto-sync etc). They also have a separate cloud storage for photos - PicasaWeb - also integrated with Android gallery, as well as G+. Then there are Google Docs. Perhaps they figured that it's long overdue for them to aggregate all those services together in a single solution, like Apple did with iCloud.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, I use Google Apps (don't knock it--good business-class SLA that secures my data, Device Management, etc.) and Google Connect syncs all of my documents onto Google Docs transparently from Microsoft Word. Imagine just saving all my files on there directly. Hmmmm..... Even more points if it saves versioning. That would make me not use Microsoft SharePoint.
Re: (Score:2)
Since Google Music was just recently launched, why didn't they do it with Google Drive to begin with? Same is true for Picasa, or now Google+. Seems they are just separating their services.
Picasa is not recent - it has been there for years (G+ integration is what's recent).
I don't know about Google Music, though. Maybe it is actually built on top of GDrive?
Re:Google Drive (Score:4, Interesting)
Speaking of Picasa, I'm disappointed with Google's support for Linux lately. For a company that actively shuns Windows for its own users, they seem to be lacking in support for it these days. The latest versions of Picasa have dropped support for Linux ... it'll be interesting to see if this has a Linux client, or even better, and open API.
Re: (Score:2)
Google support for Linux for their native client apps was always lackluster - didn't they actually use WineLib for Picasa? And they never had a GTalk client, either.
As far as protocols go, I'd fully expect it to be documented at the very least, and most likely it'll be something industry-standard like WebDAV. On the other hand, they didn't document GMusic (though, being a simple web service, it was promptly reverse-engineered, and there are several third-party apps supporting it now).
Re:Google Drive (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, Picasa and Google Earth use Wine. You can actually get the latest versions working manually, but it would be nice to see a little support given how much they rely on Linux. They do have a Google chat client, which is nice.
Seems to me Google would be much further ahead having an actual Google-branded Linux distro available along-side their Chrome downloads for people still on XP. This is the optimal time for them, before MS starts trying to lock down bootloaders.
Re: (Score:2)
Its more likely that Google Music and the forthcoming Drive are built on the same low-level cloud storage layer that underlies many of Google's cloud offerings -- like Docs, the Cloud Storage API, and many others.
Its unlikely that Music or any of the others are built on Drive.
Re: (Score:2)
Google has a long history of abandoning projects after they fail to gain users on them...
Or simply deciding to allocate resources elsewhere when ( Squirrel! ) some other technology looks more interesting to some 20-something with the title of "Manager"
Re: (Score:2)
Its almost like you are saying Google is a business or something. Anything you don't run an manage yourself can disappear at any time*. It's about calculated risk. If the service is useful, then I will use it. I never use any kind of cloud storage to keep data I don't back up elsewhere, and neither should you.
But if you aren't going to use something because it might go away, well that just about describes everything. I am glad Google is getting more focused, trying things and then getting rid of them i
Re: (Score:2)
Truecrypt. It's not completely secure since they probably have copies of your container elsewhere they can use to do a bitwise comparison against. But it's more work for them to decrypt than plaintext, and practically necessitates a determined attacker.
Assuming they don't already securely encrypt your data during transit and in storage.
Re:Google Drive (Score:5, Insightful)
Insofar as that is true, that history includes doing so with a long warning before cutting off access and with quite good support for outbound migration, so I don't see why it would be much of a rational concern. Further, the kind of cloud storage user interface being provided is a pretty trivial layer on top of the cloud storage backend that underlies many other Google services that its a pretty low risk of it being discontinued.
Neither web search engines, web-based email, or web-based video hosting were anything new when Google's search engine, Gmail, or YouTube (which wasn't Google's when it was introduced) were introduced. Nevertheless, each managed to do quite well.
Free-to-start, generous quota, and zero-effort (or close to it) signup if you already have a Google Account, by themselves, will get them some users. Actually having some interesting distinguishing features compared to other cloud storage providers would obviously be important to getting substantially more users. The most obvious opportunity I see for Google here is integration with Google Docs.
How?
Tracking slashdot may be evidence of inefficient use of resources, but its hardly an argument in support of "they know too much!" scaremongering.
Well, it might cause problems in that regard, if there was evidence that Google was illegally leveraging anything against competitors in the cloud storage space. Then again, as I discuss below, it probably wouldn't even then.
Winning in two different markets to the extent where established players in one feel that its worth their effort to complain that you are leveraging your market position in one to dominate the other is the exact opposite of a "problem" for the firm that is in that position.
It might lead to a problem if you actually were doing something that was likely to produce a signficant restraining action from some government, but as many other firms have demonstrated (notably Microsoft in the software market), even actually illegally leveraging a monopoly in one market to monopolize another rarely results in any remedy that is either timely enough to make any substantial impact on the utility of the action, or significant enough to outweigh the benefits you gain from doing it.
Re: (Score:2)
There are two large, very real problems with Google Drive. For starters Google has a long history of abandoning projects after they fail to gain users on them. This would be a huge problem with cloud storage like Google Drive.
They do tend to give you quite a bit of notice though. It may be a hassle, but it's not like it's impossible to download your stuff and upload it somewhere else.
Re: (Score:2)
How would it be a "huge problem" if Google should abandon this cloud-storage? It's only 5gig, after all, and they give away 4gig flash drives in boxes of cereal (practically).
The only reason I'd use it is to allow me to access files from anywhere, the way I use dropbox now. I would n
Re: (Score:2)
I use Dropbox as a backup system - part of a rational, multi component program. The Dropbox data is on every machine I have the account on (three currently), so that's different local stores - one at home, one at work, one in my backpack, one in the cloud. Personal info is encrypted in sparseimages - I could use truecrypt as well if I really wanted a multi platform solution.
It doesn't backup everything - my terabyte collection of pictures and video is backed up locally using a NAS and external drives - b
Re:Google Drive (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Googles target audience is not the corporate user. It's people at home that want to backup photos and such. These people will probobly have a google account, a dropbox account, etc... etc.. The more places you can backup your data the better. If Google drops the product, oh well.
2. I don' think this needs a "Good amount of users" Much like microsoft, Google wants to offer you every option. They don't want to force you to use another companies product simply because they don't offer a "google version" The biggest threat that Google would ever face would be a company offering something they do not, and then that something becoming ubiquitous enough that the rival company could offer the same service that Google does and kill off their business (see facebook)
3. Google, like every other corporation on earth, doesn't give a shit about anti-competition regulation. They can, just like Apple, Microsoft, and everyone else, just ignore it... then, when sued, draw out the court battle so long that the companies in question will die long before any litigation is resolved. Even if they do not, the fines levied are almost always so small they are a joke. If I get a speeding ticket, the fine is about 3 days pay for me. How about when a buisness gets a fine they get a similar fine... 3days gross income. Well, that's another topic.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Do you think Google will yank the service without providing people ample warning? It's storage. It's most likely pretty darn easy to download your files and upload them somewhere else.
Re: (Score:3)
The closest thing I've heard is whining about how they won't release their methods for ranking pages, and the only people that seem to be whining about that are SEOs who
Re: (Score:2)
You fail to consider that this service might have something different. Most google services did not innovate, search was already there, e-mail was already there, even calendars were already there. And then google gave you more value for free (or for data). Some might dislike that, I know I don't...
5gb is already a step in the right direction. But I'm thinking that integration with other google services (for example, douments -> docs, files to e-mail in an instant, etc).
If you have sensitive files, this s
Re: (Score:2)
Privacy? (Score:2, Informative)
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? (Score:5, Informative)
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? (Score:5, Informative)
This [arstechnica.com] is that Ars article.
Re: (Score:2)
If you're worried about your privacy from the party offering the service, you can't give Dropbox a pass.
Like you noted, you use TrueCrypt or similar. This is even a suggested solution by Dropbox team and it's a valid one, because you should never trust third party provider with your encryption.
However, at least Dropbox does more encryption on the data and actually stores it in encrypted form, even if they are able to obtain the keys. This is still vastly better than just using HTTPS or other "secure" connection between the client and server but still saving it unencrypted. On top of that HTTPS etc are subje
Re: (Score:3)
Does anyone really think Dropbox considers its individual users important enough to attempt to break their truecrypt volumes? I mean there's wearing a tinfoil hat and there's wearing a full tinfoil body suit.
Re:Privacy? (Score:4, Insightful)
Spideroak lets you keep the keys. Truecrypt will work but does come with two big performance hits. First you have to upload the entire container the first time, after which it should just need differences sending. Unfortunately Windows doesn't allow the client software to know which parts of the file changed via notifications, just that something changed, so it has to scan the entire file. If your container is 1GB then that's scanning 1GB every time you make a change.
Re: (Score:2)
Mozy [mozy.com] allows you to store stuff on their system with a private encryption. they do warn you loads about "if you lose the key, you lose the data". That's a backup solution primarily, but they're working on a 'stash' that is an instant-sync type thing.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Don't let the horrible UI performance fool you, Spideroak is based on Python and not Java. Wuala doesn't have any jar or class files in its directory and looks native to me.
Re:Privacy? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Privacy? (Score:5, Informative)
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: (Score:2)
Wuala requires java - this is a deal breaker for me.
Are there any other multiplatform remote storage options that doesn't require non-standard and resource intensive runtime components?
Re: (Score:3)
If you're worried about the content of your files, for whatever reason, don't store the file(s) in the cloud. Period.
WebDAV access? (Score:5, Insightful)
We'll have to see. If the new "GDrive" can be securely accessed via the open, standard WebDAV protocol, I'll think it's interesting and I'll be an enthusiastic adopter. If not, then it's just another cloud file locker that uses proprietary client software (or a web UI, no good for integration work), which is considerably less interesting.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Why not try the free "hubic" service by OVH. 25GB free.
I use it to backup my linux box (over webdav).
Re: (Score:2)
Why not try the free "hubic" service by OVH. 25GB free.
I use it to backup my linux box (over webdav).
Interesting. Looks like it needs a dedicated app to access, right ? No folder syncing ? In typical french fashion the whole thing seems monolingual french too. Not a problem for me, but I imagine a lot of Slashdot folks might have difficulty.
5 GB (Score:5, Insightful)
Only 5 GB? Anyone else a little surprised by that?
My gmail accounts have more space than that, and people have been writing browser extensions and apps for a while to leverage that as cloud storage. 5 GB is at the high end of current free offerings (it matches SugarSync and Box), but by no means revolutionary. You'd think Google, with their resources, would be offering a bit more, especially with their late entry into the game. I guess they can push the tie-ins to other services - like being able to send attachments in Gmail straight to your Google cloud storage. But other than that, what's the incentive, especially if already using another service?
Re: (Score:2)
Only 5 GB? Anyone else a little surprised by that?
Free. Read my lips. Free. I'm sure they can provide some more space for a little (cough) incentive...
Re:5 GB (Score:5, Informative)
5 GB is at the high end of current free offerings
SkyDrive is 25 GB and free.
Re: (Score:2)
You're right, I forgot about that (and I even have an account).
I never did use it though, even when I was running Windows and used a third party app to make the SkyDrive service look like a network drive.
Have they added any features? Any native clients that do automatic syncing or anything?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Skydrive has a 100MB limitation per file. Dealbreaker.
Well, thankfully for most people, the files they need to store aren't that big, and that isn't a limitation. Its not a good option for your bookleg movies or porn collection, but 100MB is plenty for photos, documents, etc. A search on my laptop shows basically nothing above that size that isn't an installer, a ZIP containing a bunch of smaller files, or videos that came from either my digital cameras or my HDV video camera.
Personally, I'd like the ability to store my entire media library up on Skydrive or a
Re:5 GB (Score:4, Interesting)
And I can't but a terabyte and a half of cloud storage from a reputable place at a reasonable price... yet
I know where you can get about 500 GB for no monthly fee. You just need an always-on server (preferably running *nix) and network connection, and be willing to "trade" storage, storing about 1 TB of other peoples' files (all data is automatically encrypted before upload), using the Tahoe LAFS distributed storage grid. Actually, if you get your own group together you can get as much space as you want, but the grid I'm a member (currently) has a 1 TB maximum. The storage nodes are scattered across several continents and Tahoe applies Reed-Solomon coding to your data so even if many of the servers holding your data were to disappear, you could stil recover all of it.
If this is interesting, check out our wiki at: http://bigpig.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/WebHome [bigpig.org]
Re:5 GB (Score:4, Insightful)
The reason they give so much extra space for gmail is because most people won't even use a tenth of that space. Hell, I've had a gmail account since the service came out and I think of my like 9 gigs of space they offer, I'm still only like 1% full. I'm a heavy emailer, I just don't often need to send or receive large attachments.
Google banks on the fact that very few people put lots of data into their emails, even if some people do crazy things like use gmail as a file store, it's still worth it to advertise that amount of space to the masses. It's basically just a marketing ploy. A successful (and useful to end users) ploy, but a marketing ploy none the less.
However with a file storage service, people are far more inclined to actually utilize the space they are given. For example, I've got 5 gigs of space on Dropbox, and I'm already using 35% of it. Google will be less inclined to provide much more space for free than 5GB because more people are more inclined to actually use that space.
And after they scrape all that data (Score:2)
And after they scrape all that data watch out for GooglePorn.
Re: (Score:3)
The only questions here are
- Can you easily create an anonymous account and
- Can you make your files accessible to others?
Re: (Score:2)
Not sure anonymous and Google go together. They may not have your street address, but they know what you fap to.
Can Google be trusted with so much Private Data? (Score:3, Interesting)
Extremely Thin (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
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?
Hey, I don't know why you've been modded down to oblivion, but thanks for mentioning EchoFS. I'd not heard of it before. It works great with davfs in Linux... something that is pretty difficult to find, at least with this amount of space.
rsync.net (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:rsync.net (Score:4, Informative)
And you can secure it with encfs.
MS SkyDrive (Score:3, Informative)
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: (Score:2)
I expect Microsoft can handle giving that because they've got a smaller userbase, and who's really going to use 25GB?
Docs and gmail (Score:2)
I think there IS a consumer gap as far as sharing files bigger than an email attachment without
G:\ In use. (Score:4, Funny)
I already have a G: drive, can we remap it to another drive letter?
The internet wants to know ... (Score:2)
... can I migrate my megauploads?
The question is... (Score:5, Interesting)
Will Google have native clients for Windows, Linux, OS X, iOS, Android and Symbian that will offer real file system integration?
Or is that just a web drive you have to up- and download data from?
I'm asking because I'm using Dropbox in a business environment in which I export a Samba share from a Linux server to Dropbox which gets synced to a bunch of clients on half a dozen of very different devices running on Windows, Mac OS, Linux, Android and iOS and all of this works just fine. Having 5 GB instead of 2 GB for free is not much of an advantage if there is no system integration to speak of and exactly this has always been a problem with Google. Hey, they even have a hard time to get IMAP right.
Re: (Score:3)
Yup, and the Chrome browser is practically an OS at the rate it is going. 80% of the source code is stuff that is probably already on your hard drive if you use linux, but which will now be loaded a second time in RAM because Google doesn't believe in dynamic linking...
Question before I sign up (Score:5, Insightful)
Is my data stored in the US?
Does the US government claim to have jurisdiction over my data? (I think I know the answer to this one).
Gmail Drive Shell Extention (Score:4, Informative)
Years too late Google (Score:3)
After you have been forcing G+ on everybody I'm never going to use any of your new services.
Ahhh 1997 (Score:2)
when geocities, freeyellow, angelfire and etc... offering 10mb was plenty.
Re: (Score:2)
Why would it be anything but a 404? The service hasn't even been released yet.
Re: (Score:2)
Probably because it requires Windows 8?
I'm no slow adopter of new versions of Windows, but even I'm a bit weary of upgrading to Windows 8. I think Microsoft is taking too much focus away from what desktops are for and putting too much focus on tablets. I want my desktop to behave like a desktop, not a tablet, and even if I disable the whole Metro thing, there's certain changes that were made that I'm not comfortable with.
Re: (Score:2)
Edit: I suppose I was misinformed about SkyDrive's availability. Appears it doesn't require Windows 8.