Google One is coming soon | Hacker News Reader

Google One is coming soon

one.google.com

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https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17067466

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17067168

So, they've made Google One and Google Drive, in an effort to have Google OneDrive in series instead of in parallel.

Wow, this is great. Where can I find more of your poetry?

I never thought another tech company could be more awkward than Microsoft at branding. I guess it’s just hard to name things.

To add, just a few years ago we had Ubuntu One, also a cloud storage service.

I'm kind of disappointed Ubuntu didn't sue Microsoft over the name. Given they had just had to rename from SkyDrive to OneDrive due to trademark infringement it would have been amusing to see them need to do it again for not having actually checked for similar services with similar names. Or maybe there was a payment to Ubuntu involved there.

Yes it is and hello from someone at Microsoft who has helped brand a few things. It’s really hard problem that is not easy to describe to others but branding in huge companies like these is hell. Though worth it when we get it right and make things clear. Trust me no one here branding wants it to suck.

Curious, what aspects of the process do lead to the suckage? Committee-driven decisions? Existing ecosystems and conventions? Politics?

I'm still confused by .Net Core, .Net Framework, and .Net Standard. The diagram in this article made me ten times more confused:

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/dotnet/2018/05/07/net-core-...

It seems to contradict itself so many times.

Little off-topic: Is there any work being done with Visual Studio's integrated Code Review system[0]? You cannot even run the solution (inc. changes) from it!

We're stuck on TFVC, is the planned solution to move everyone to Git and Pull Requests? The recent Visual Studio Live Share is really kick butt, but doesn't solve traditional "offline" code reviews.

Also we're using O365 Planner and Teams, but there's no integration into Team Services at all. Any chance we'll see Planner plan tasks as a work item in Visual Studio/Team Services?

[0] https://i.imgur.com/LNeTASv.png

You should be because the concept of .NET changed over the years. When first announced, it was supposed to be Microsoft's alternative to Java. In their internal documents, they defined it as infrastructure centered around MS SQL Server. With time, things developed and the initial vision changed a few times. So yes, it's a mess name-wise.

dotnet Standard is the core of everything. The underlying code for both the dotnet Framework and dotnet Core. What the differences between the dotnet Framework and the dotnet Core is I can't tell you. All I know is that dotnet Core is cross platform and the cool kid in town. Use Core if possible.

.NET Standard is an interface. It describes a specification that must be met. .NET Framework, Xamarin, UWP and .NET Core are implementations. Both have APIs that are specific to the implementation (for example, .NET Framework has APIs that are specific to Window, while .NET Core is cross-platform and doesn't have them, and Xamarin has mobile-specific APIs that don't make sense on desktop). At a minimum they both implement the APIs designated by the .NET Standard specification. It is a guideline for you to write libraries that can be shared anywhere without recompilation.

Is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUXnJraKM3k still a good description of how things mess up?

Skype is the one that blows my mind. You had another product that doesn't work with Skype, so you renamed it Skype. WAT?

I remember at some point there was a popular theory that if you add an "X" to a name, it appears more modern to the customer. So Microsoft started to brand different technologies in this way. The data exchange mechanism became "ActiveX". Their abstraction layer for graphics cards became "DirectX".

A good example of how RAID 1 is not a backup.

Is there any kind of RAID that can be considered a backup?

No, because any individual system is still susceptible to theft, fire, water damage, electrical damage. RAID 1 is just a protection from one hard drive dying.

That was a rhetorical question :). If I delete files by accident, RAID won't help me.

Maybe it's a conspiracy to replace OneDrive search results with their own haha

I'm a fan of Amazon Drive. The native clients are nice with a clear interface, and have the option to simply upload files or directories once, without having to synchronize them in local directories. It's not immediately clear how to do this in Google Drive, which seems confused especially since they've split it into two different products already.

There's also been a persistent problem with the Google Drive native desktop client, where syncing files consumes 100% of your local CPU for hours (or days) as it syncs, a problem which Dropbox and Amazon Drive do not have.

I wish Google built is own first party cli tools for Google drive. Sort of like rsync but with a Google flavor. I'm sure people would love it.

They definitely don't want people using it as a backup system.

Their unlimited storage is useless because you can't actually use it properly. It saves them money.

I don't think Google cares whether people would love it or not, what counts is how much money they can get on it - in this case, zero.

Doesn’t One, in Google’s (or more precisely, Android’s) parlance, signify cheapness?

I don't see it as a bad thing. To me Android One is a symbol of confidence and simplicity. It is a promise of no bloat on Android. It is a promise of timely updates. Most importantly, it is a signal of a good value. Look where the trainwreck of the fire phone got to at Amazon.com

They also have Android One. Guess soon they will release Android Drive.

I think the whole "One" branding is a tired trope which many technology companies tend to use to show one platform, company etc. In past 5 years I have seen 3 of my employers add One X, with X being the company name, as the official goal or strategy.

It's the same as 'AAAA Acme Plumbing' and '123 Towing'

Alphanumeric positioning has implied meaning.

Google loves talking about things they're not ready to actually start doing yet.

And then do them and retire them six months later.

And then three months later I read about them and think "that sounds really interesting".

By that stage they will have relaunched a slightly different rebrand of the previous poorly conceived idea.

I love Dropbox, I am a paid plus user. The syncing is amazing, and absolutely gets out of your way. You just have to put something, and forget about it. It's sad that they are slowly moving their focus towards businesses. While that is not a problem in and of itself, it seems individual users don't have much priority anymore.

“Be among the first to know when Google One is available in your area” made me think why they're rolling out the service based on Area?

Wonder if it is due to technical reasons or demographic reasons, or it is still in the process of "beta" and needs to be tweaked more for releasing to all areas at once?

Area = country most likely

Since customer service is part of it, they probably need to staff up customer support by country/language.

After completely screwing so many of us over with that horrible File Stream "upgrade", I'll pass. I still have an orphaned local Google Drive folder that randomly stopped syncing to sort through and move to Dropbox.

Dropbox is leagues ahead of any file sharing software out there.

They’re on a bright future after the IPO. Dropbox Paper is absolutely amazing.

And yet I still can't easily get it to ignore `node_modules` folders.

Please use git (or similar) for code. GitLab even has free private repos for personal projects.

Dropbox is for binary files (like PDF, MSOffice, etc).

Sometimes you just want to share code between computers without committing it.

Does Git have an easy way to share "uncommitted" code that doesn't involve committing it on a branch and rebaseing it later?

I say this as a huge fan of Git, that's one scenario where a Dropbox folder is stronger than Git

Dropbox is for whatever I want to put in it. Including code! Just because I keep my project folders inside of Dropbox doesn't mean i'm not using git.

Syncthing handles this pretty well. Only downside (upside in some cases) is that it's self hosted rather than a service.

https://syncthing.net/

Rather give send my birth certificate and passport to Microsoft and all other personal information than ever store stuff in Dropbox.

Why's that?

Might have something to do with the whole Condoleeza Rice kerfuffle that happened years ago. People swore against Dropbox ever since and for some reason feel the need to continue swearing against it today.

Take a look at Amazon Drive. I love Dropbox but the price points / storage amounts of their plans isn't quite what I'd like.

To me this is the Amazon Prime for Google, with Drive storage + other perks.

The thing that really surprises me is "access to Google experts", which apparently means chat, email and phone [1]. Google has really avoided direct B2C interaction in the past; I wonder how they are developing this ability from scratch.

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/14/say-hello-to-google-one/

Is this what Duo and Wavenet are for? They'll just have robots talking to us instead of humans. Maybe they are playing a different game.

Google has ~always had chat, email, and phone support for most of their paid-for B2C products. For products like Pixel it's even integrated in the settings UI for example. https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/7109524?hl=en&r...

Good point. I even have a pixel, have used support, and ignored this. Demonstrates what a small part of my interactions with Google are paid!

Maybe that filter (a small fraction of Google accounts will become paid One accounts) means that there is no heculean effort to build a human support team at Google scale. It's interesting that Amazon has very arms length support for its 100M+ Prime users, even at a higher price point.

It would be great if Google drive wouldn't use up my MacBook's battery so fast. All the time my cpu usage is at 100% when using Google Backup and sync. Something that other competitors have managed to do better than Google. Using dropbox at the moment.

Waiting for the first person to suggest Canonical was years ahead of the curve...

Been using Syncthing these last few days, today it saved me about three hours of sending files to California just to download them back in the same office. Highly recommended if you understand and can afford the small amount of time you trade for functioning peer-to-peer transfers (which, in basically every case, are faster than client-server-client transfers).

With space shared between family members! Yay!

Time to start a family!

I'm not sure what this is? Is it a rebrand of Google Drive?

EDIT: Yep, with more features! https://www.techradar.com/news/everything-you-need-to-know-a...

No, it's not a re-brand. It's the name for their paid storage plans with live customer support.

https://www.blog.google/products/google-one/one-simple-way-g...

As someone actively using both Google Drive File Stream and Google Backup and Sync. For the love of god, fix your desktop software.

Dropbox and OneDrive both understand the concept of filenames and collisions. It's very obvious that Google Drive is not a file system, especially when you have shared folders with multiple people.

Filestream constantly crashes my Mac. It’s really frustrating. Trying to move a bunch of files really destroys it.

There are a few options for improved Google Drive clients. We use Syncdocs https://syncdocs.com as it has end-to-end encryption. None of these clients are free, though, so perhaps you get what you pay for.

No more cloud space required! Please stop marketing and selling cloud space.

I am totally done with Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Apple and Amazon. I want my independence back. How can I set this up myself without relying on the above mentioned service providers ?

By not asking anyone else to answer the question for you and actually doing it yourself, be independent.

Think of it as "Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Apple and Amazon" vs. "the rest of us". There's no problem with asking other members of the community for help on self-hosting.

Hear ye, hear ye! Junior developers you should listen to joenathanone and never ask more senior people! You should make us watch over your back everyday because of your silly hubris and for our fear of you delaying our project! Asking questions is stupid and for the feeble minded! Google is your only friend!

He is asking how he can completely replace Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Apple and Amazon. Ok start by making an OS (desktop & mobile), a social networking platform (make sure to get all your friends to join), mobile phone hardware and build some warehouses and stuff, once your done with all that ping me and I will give you the next steps. Ask a real question and I would be happy to give a real answer.

Synology Diskstation.

https://nextcloud.com is a free software alternative that's pretty mature and feature-rich. I've been using it for several years (it was originally owncloud) and it works great. Setting up backend storage to use S3 essentially gives you unlimited storage at very cheap prices.

https://old.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/

https://old.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/

You could take a look at Owncloud, I know there's a few projects that also do it but I can't name any others off the top of my head.

OwnCloud (https://owncloud.org) does a pretty ok job for self-hosted file syncing.

This would be an alternative of Google Drive?

This is the name of their paid storage offering with live customer support.

a Google-wide plan that includes Drive storage.

Google One is 1/2 to 1/3 the cost of Google Cloud Storage...

It might be because of the SLA guarantees Google Cloud provides. And it is commercial which means a markup.

there's nothing here - why was this even posted?

I believe this is the GDPR compliant Google drive.

Anutha wun

I guess they will eventually phase out Google Drive, which was actually a perfectly descriptive name. What a shame.

"Google Drive" would be a good name for a self-driving car, too, though.

Might be a long term plan. When apple rebranded iBook to MacBook, it seemed weird at the time, but they presumably had the iDevice in the pipeline (as well as their iBooks eBook system).

However, I think that One is the name of the overarching storage subscription/billing service, of which Drive, Photos and Mail (and possibly more) will consume.

Also, Drive is getting to be a bit of an anachronism (like the floppy disk icon to save). Google Storage or something similar would be clearer.

haters, meh - I upgraded right away, saved a bunch of $, same interface. I'm happy.

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