Google Drive Goes Live 323
lemmen writes "As widely expected, Google Drive has launched officially today. Google Drive is free for the first 5GB, while you can get an upgrade to 25GB for $2.50 a month. They say the service is available for PCs, Macs, Android devices, and soon iOS devices. According to Mercury News, '... the success of Drive will ride largely on whether Google can differentiate its offering from already established fast-growing cloud storage startups that were in the market first, such as Dropbox and Box, as well as Microsoft's SkyDrive service and big consumer media competitors like Apple's iCloud and Amazon's Cloud Drive. ... Existing Google Docs files, the centerpiece of Google's existing cloud storage offering, will move to the Google Drive service once users download apps and install the new service."
They are too lazy to check browser language prefs (Score:5, Interesting)
Google as ever uses reverse IP lookup rather than browser preferences to set the language (language preferences only work once you log in and often even not when logged in). They assume people do not travel and everyone within a particular geographical area will only speak the dominant language.
Re:Forget this garbage (Score:5, Interesting)
As a matter of fact, I do. But oddly enough, yesterday's Dilbert cartoon is apropos [dilbert.com].
If something is scraping it, it is available to be read by humans.
Now, if they tell us that under no circumstances will any entity ever peek into my data then I'd believe it to be secure. Well, even then, I'm not sure I'd "believe" that.
Otherwise, it's being opened and read and cataloged and indexed. I don't care if it's a scraper, or an intern at that point. You may see a magical difference between those, but I don't.
Specifics? (Score:5, Interesting)
This is true in the sense that Google Docs could already store any kind of file and what Google did with drive was:
1. Rename Google Docs to "Drive"
2. Expand the free storage quota
3. Provide desktop and mobile apps and SDK
Its false in the sense that you can store files that Google Docs can't edit (and, you can use the web interface to edit files that Docs can't edit itself, since the Drive SDK allows Drive apps installed through the Chrome Web Store to register associations with file types so that "open with [app]" is available from the Drive UI (and the user can chose to set an app as the default editor for a particular file type, as well.)
I had no problem logging in with my non-apps account. In fact, if I'm logged in and navigate to docs.google.com, I actually get the Drive web UI (which is virtually identical to what the Docs UI was before Drive was introduced.)
Google Docs included both a number of file editor applications and universal (any file) cloud storage. Drive is basically an enhancement to the cloud storage part (which is now renamed) to expand the free quota, provide desktop apps which provide desktop integration, providing an SDK, etc,
How is it "much less useful than its competitors"?
Re:Forget this garbage (Score:5, Interesting)
Google could easily have provided a client built upon an open api and won a lot of favor.
Re:Forget this garbage (Score:2, Interesting)
Google could easily have provided a client built upon an open api and won a lot of favor.
That depends on their revenue model, doesn't it. If their client is part of that model, then no, they could not 'easily' provide what you're suggesting. Worse, if trust is a key ingredient to their revenue (and, face it, it kinda has to be just on the grounds that it is a cloud service...) then they're not going to want to provide an opportunity to have third parties developing clients that do precisely what the 'legitimate gripers' are worried about Google doing.
This isn't a legitimate gripe, it's a standard knee-jerk criticism that is routinely modded up around here. Here's an alternative comment he could have made: "I don't trust any entity to hold my data. Is there an open standard server + client combo I can put on my co-located webserver that does basically the same job?" See the difference? I mean, seriously, boo hoo, the company that is providing the service wants it done their own way. Waaah.
Re:Google drive with True Crypt? (Score:3, Interesting)
Try BoxCryptor. http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/encrypt-dropbox-files-boxcryptor/. Install it on each machine. It creates a Drive that acts as a front end to the cloud drive and encrypts/decrypts on the fly. I saw it here a couple of weeks ago for some other article. I would post on my other account, but I am modding too. I want to help, but not strip the modded posts. :)