Google One
one.google.com
one.google.com
It's probably a great internal name - hey, we've been providing storage for photos, email, docs, drive, and more, for over a decade, and we've finally integrated that storage into one space, so let's call it Google one! It's a great name - simple and powerful, symbolizes the effort and direction we've taken in the past 5-10 years of integrating our consumer, day to day products.
However, outside of the Google box, no one understands or cares what they've been doing. "Google one" sounds like... nothing. "What is it???" is an extremely appropriate response.
Maybe in the future it will come to symbolize all the services of Google, available in one centralized location, allowing for future consumers to easily access all of google services without separate pay schemes, storage, or other infrastructure, and make it a 1 stop shop for your services needs, common or obscure.
But right now, the copy and landing page are way off the messaging mark.
I haven't tested Google One yet, but it doesn;t seem to change anything there, just offering more space for them all.
Besides it being a service you pay for, there aren't many similarities between Google One and Waymo One and I think it'll just be confusing.
It sounds precisely like Amazon's "Prime" brand, and it's no coincidence. It's a sunk-cost feature to convince you to come back (like membership shopping clubs - Costco, Sams). Unfortunately I don't think it has the draw of 'free shipping' (+ music/TV/etc).
Speaking about bad namings - reminds me how back at Sun at one moment everything became "Java" (even stock ticker, no kidding). "We've got just 5 product boxes (Java this and Java that), just 5 boxes, that's all! Simplify things for the customer!" Lets just say that naming as Java various non-Java things simplified nothing for nobody.
Google Keep -> Keep -> Keep Notes -> Notes (In near future)
Not unlike how Google became alphabet which seems influenced by *Amazon A to Z
“Plus.”
Ugh.
It’s a huckster hook word, engorged with talking points so that PowerPoint decks can prompt for easy segues during sales pitches.
Well, Google+ was taken :)
It’s like “put your entire digital existence onto our platform” Oh and by the way took “don’t be evil” out. Now give us all of your data, look at this beautiful UI!
Sorry Google, I don’t trust you anymore, I used to love you, it used to be about the ideals and ideas, but now avarice has possessed and consumed you.
No thanks.
> And remember… don’t be evil, and if you see something that you think isn’t right – speak up!
https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct/
Media headlines from the time gave the impression that it was removed, which was absolutely false.
1. Moving from top of the doc to very bottom of multi page doc, after things like Trade Controls.
2. Change of first party imperative to third party - you remember, not we
Google does something unfavorable: "don't be evil, HUH?"
Google takes away the slogan: "so now you're evil, HUH?"
It's ok Google, I'm not angry, I'm just disappointed.
You can go back to relentlessly optimizing the max($) function, but everyone is wising up to you.
I'm actually more worried about Amazon, Amazon are an aggressive weed with reaching tendrils, you are more like an aging billionaire, wealthy, unable to innovate, jaded, your spark has gone.
Your questionable activity means you no longer command the respect you once did. The greats are ambivalent about working for you, and the ones you hold - you only hold with money. When you have to pay all the time, it's not love (that's a joke, stand down the database queries)
Incidentally, don't you sometimes wonder why your founders are gone? Why Schmidt is gone? The greats have left, because of who you have become.
For example, even if they don't need the data now because you're paying not to see ads, they might still collect it so that they can show you "better" ads if/when you stop paying.
It feels like there is an ever growing privacy awareness yet companies like google keep pushing the cloud storage for typical consumer. I’d be curious to know how average person feels about storing their private photos in google’s servers.
I think the average consumer is in the same boat. They want someone else to take care of this problem.
From the main support index at https://support.google.com/googleone/ here are various tidbits of useful content that the surrounding HN comments wished for (sorry, none describe the "expert help" available):
"Get Google One":
https://support.google.com/googleone/answer/9004013
> With Google One, you get more storage, help from experts, and extra member benefits. You can share your membership with up to 5 family members.
"How your existing storage works with Google One":
https://support.google.com/googleone/answer/9004014
> You'll get storage through your Google One membership, which will become your new storage limit. You'll no longer buy storage through Google Drive.
"Claim a Benefit":
https://support.google.com/googleone/answer/9003266
> Google One hotel deals depend on the day, time, and other factors. There might not be a deal for every hotel search.
https://support.google.com/googleone/answer/9080668
"Learn where Google One is available":
> Create or join a family; Use Google Play Family Library; Subscribe to the Google Play Music family plan; Use a family calendar
Or maybe one Google One will be deprecated in favor of two Google Twos.
It seems like a nice idea. I'm not on board with any new Google platform unless I have some sort of assurance that you're just not going to kill this off in two years, or let it suffer a slow death of neglect and attrition.
Thanks, but you need to grow up a bit, Google.
But still, this is a very valid point. It's hard to trust any Google service and it's risky to make any significant investment of time structuring your life around them. This is why I don't use Google Music anymore. I invest far too much time into my playlists and music collections to trust them.
Wave was launched to a ton of fan-fare and seemed like a first-order product, similar to Hangouts... which is now also dying a slow death.
For example, they have already removed the marketing page that people here are making fun of: https://imgur.com/a/xsF1ZX3
It is actually quite simple, no revenue no services.
Aren't things usually cheaper when you buy bulk?
When you pay for 30 TB on the other hand, you probably need it, so their actual cost might be reflected well in that price. This is basically the long tail effect, so when you optimize the price for the majority, price increases are not linear.
A business that needs 100TB (or whatever) has more to spend, and is much less sensitive to price.
[poor man's offer] [crap offer] [real offer] [expensive crap offer]
I need 1tb of space for my images but having to pay $10 makes me feel strange (yes it is relativly cheap and i can afford it) but this non linearity is probably here because of some mix calculation they are doing.
Instead it's... something? A one sentence description at the beginning of the page wouldn't hurt...
"Dropbox is a modern workspace"
"Keep everything organized without breaking your flow"
I don't understand why these companies feel the need to describe their services in this way.
Ugh... Google never misses an opportunity to shit on its most ardent supporters - the people with personal G-Suite domains.
If they addressed this issue I would probably consider consolidating Dropbox, Spotify, and maybe some other stuff into a single Google One subscription but I suppose grandfathered free gsuite accounts are a low priority for these things.
Reasons may be justified internally but a shitty experience for customers is still a shitty experience.
In the process I found many small bugs, but also a huge one... if you have 200GB of photos in G Suite, share & copy to a Gmail account (G One) and then break the share... you have the 200GB of photos but Google One storage will report usage as 0GB.
Customer Service is not called Customer Service but Google Experts. What does this mean for actual service?
The thing I like/jumps out for me is no compressing of images. That is one of the reasons I decided to go with Backblaze for backup. I would still stay with backblaze as I am not so confident about Google keeping the product around.
"Your stuff, anywhere". I have managed to setup a upload workflow for Backblaze on my linux machine without going through a browser. Not sure if it is possible in Google One drive. Browsers crash/freeze at the most importune moments. Then I need to restart the upload and pray. There is no way to say upload only the diff (atleast as far as I remember). The extra upload just means increased cost.
Still somewhere, someone in Google has finally listened(?) to the community and heard that customer support is needed. This is an excellent step in the right direction, I suppose.
My skeptical meter just went off the charts.
Would it be possible for you to share your way of doing this? I would be very interested in B2 access without browser.
I mean, I use online storage for my family pictures, my important documents etc. etc, and so the minimum requirement is that it is encrypted and the company contractually agrees not to snoop, data-mine or even sell that data. Google basically tells you they will do all of that, tied to the most invasive unique ID except than maybe facebook.
Why would anyone actually do that? That's just a disaster waiting to happen...
Expert access for $1.99/mo? Huh?
In the near future, 2 people are on GChat, I mean Hangouts, I mean Duo, I mean Allo, I mean FB Messenger. And one of them is one of those people that can't use the shift key:
"Where did you put the pictures from our trip?"
"oh, gone"
"What do you mean they're gone?!!!!?"
Don't worry, It will, too, pass.
Is it that hard to include a sentence of the form "$PRODUCT is..." somewhere?
I stick with Dropbox for the Linux support. It is fantastic. It works on servers, with no GUI, so I can easily sync stuff from my Windows Laptop and my Linux server, where I perform scientific stuff.
We're also the only set of users that will actually saturate the oversold storage while still burning through that $2.50 worth of customer service with a single question prefaced with "hi, I run Linux."
I also pay for SpiderOak cloud storage but they don’t allow selective sync - you get everything mirrored on your laptop.
That said, Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive are still useful on Linux laptops through the web app.
Apple:
50GB for 0.99
200GB for 2.99
2TB for 9.99
Google:
100GB for 1.99
200GB for 2.99
2TB for 9.99
It seems like the main improvements are adding family plans to match Apple and having presumably not-chatbot support but that requires scrolling a long way down the page.
It is amazing how Google screws up any UI or explanatory pages apart from search. I guess common sense isn't taught in CLRS.
1. Your storage in Google Drive is actually not used only by what's on GDrive, but includes your emails and Google Photos. So it is more correct to deemphasize the connection to GDrive.
2. This is a good first step to unify Google's paid B2C services that it may want to offer, especially since G+ is being discontinued.
Currently they are backed up on my local machine and my server, but was considering cloud options. My wife does use Google Drive (paid account w/ Chromebook) but I don't feel that comfortable with Google things.
Does anyone have good alternatives that perhaps respect privacy? :)
That they're quite reasonably priced doesn't hurt either :)
Also, high value digital artifacts like my book projects and customer work get backed up automatically to remote git servers.
I seldom do local backups anymore on my MacBook to TimeMachine, perhaps once a month, and for backing up my Linux laptop I only back up to multiple cloud providers and git remote services.
With that in mind, borg backup does a great job at archiving/compressing/encrypting. Then you can sync to GDrive or any other service using e.g. rclone.
So this announcement is the thing that will finally get me to export all of my data and leave Gmail for personal use altogether. Congratulations, One Team!
Really don't follow how this announcement lacks respect for pricing or sla.
Not that Dropbox is bad. It would be nice to have things in one place only, but maybe it's better to not be completely dependent on one service.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17067168 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17079306
Why this wouldn’t also bundle things like YouTube red or google music proves my hypothesis wrong though.
I just don’t know what the hell is going on at Google lately. What is their strategy? What is their vision? Everything they do is so disjointed and incongruent.
I think this might be the same thing.
If you can figure out what Google One is you are a genius!
I don't get the "they'll shut this down anyways" sentiment in every Google related submission on HN. It's getting tiresome.
They did try it with Google Contributor, but only for a short amount of time to a limited set of users (US only). Now it changed to be for specific websites only which is pretty absurd.
I believe they haven't move toward ad-free plans simply because it would cannibalize their own product. They can sell ad space because they get ad view from all type of consumer. If they can't reach theses consumers, they have nothing to sell, thus will lose theses sales.
I think it's absurd though because it's the future and instead each website will implements it (and some will implements it together) which will cannibalize Google. Patreon is just the beginning.
They added the client support, that's all.
This is such a bad landing page. I have more questions than answers.
It's also a perfect example of how product management works at Google. It overlaps heavily with Google Drive and Google Photos and it probably only makes sense to the people who worked on it. Don't worry though, it will get cancelled just as soon as anyone can figure out what the heck it's for.
It's Extra Google.
Could've been called Google Extra, but the word Extra has a negative connotation to it at this time.
...actually, even that interpretation seems applicable here.
Google One includes
100 GB storage
Access to Google experts
Option to add your family
Extra member benefits
So does this mean that if I pay for this as an Android dev and I have Play store issues, I can talk to an actual human instead of to a bot that just sends the same auto-reply ? And does it mean getting actual answers instead of them evading the question ?
Things to note:
1. Google's Drive File Stream is still not available for normal accounts, only for GSuite — I wonder why, because Backup and Sync is pretty shitty, at least on Macs
2. GSuite Business costs per user about the same price as Google One's 2 TB plan and you get essentially unlimited storage, Gmail on your own domain, a better ToS
In other words, GSuite is a much better deal, the only annoyance for people that are into Google Photos is that photos in your Drive won't appear automatically in G Photos (not covered by GSuite, different ToS) ... but that's probably a good thing :-)
So I'm wondering, for power users that would want this, why bother with Google One at all?
IMO it's targeting a few groups:
- Grandpa who wants to see all the family photos and is not completely behind technically
- Grandpa's kids who are tired of being tech support for him and also probably have lots of photos they would happily store with Google
- Generally, people 30-50 who want simple "just works" tech and probably will use the hotel discounts
I put everything on Google's Backup and Sync... and was initially happy enough with it as a replacement for Dropbox.
Then my laptop crashed.
When I went to restore, I was limited to copying files down 2 GB at a time.
Worse... the process didn't tell me that, I had to figure it out after doing a few downloads and finding that not all my files made it. There was no warning, no errors. I hit download on a folder, it came down "successfully" but when I looked at the contents locally vs. what was on Google Drive it never matched up.
Can't stress enough how shitty this was. I had to manually save everything and manually check to make sure it all saved. I'm still not convinced I got it all downloaded correctly. Took probably 100 hours of my time. Never a single error message if you tried to download a folder that was bigger than 2 GB, but behind the scenes it was truncating files.
A logo
A headline
Two short sentences
A sign up box
A note saying that paying customers will eventually automatically be upgraded.
That's it.
No pictures. No movies. No backgrounds. No parallax. No nothing.
Did they completely change the landing page since this was posted 20 minutes ago?
For me (Germany, mobile Firefox) it's completely overladen with animations that showcase all the wonderful file formats you can store on your cloud drive.
I'm visiting from Scandinavia.
List of countries where Google One is available Argentina Australia Brazil Canada France Germany India Israel Italy Japan Mexico Russia South Korea Spain Taiwan United Kingdom United States
OK, I'm a photographer. But I literally outgrew a 300GB drive about 10 years ago, and genuinely shot nearly 100GB in one week on a trip earlier in the year. Heck, my music collection's over 100GB. (No, I don't stream. Too much obscure stuff, too many low bit rate feeds.)
Those numbers. Bit basic. I remember the days when Google's storage offerings were light years ahead of the competition and effectively infinite for most uses.
>100GB in one week
I'm willing to bet most users don't use 100GB per week of cloud storage. It seems like your expectation of "effectively infinite for most uses" is still true, you just don't fit the definition of "most uses".
Edit: looks like they only have a web app for desktop and only have an app for Android, no iPhone support yet: https://one.google.com/faq/google-one-app
Without syncing like MEGASync or Dropbox (even if it's only one way uploading) this is pretty useless as a central repository.
Each of the 6 accounts gets: - 1TB for OneDrive - Office licence - 60mins for Skype - 50GB for Outlook
Initially I wanted to go with the Google Drive because I'm using Android, but after trying android and mac one drive clients i decided to go with one drive.
I do agree with people's reservations about privacy and longevity with Google, their products don't seem to last for long!
Say if you get the 2 TB plan, will each family member get 2 TB, or will that 2 TB be shared between all family members?
Every new storage product offered by Google serves mostly to remind people to get their stuff off of Google.
If you have any copyrighted material in your data/content without a valid proof of ownership or payment -> censored OR worse prosecuted and racketted to pay?
The actual amount of space is so trivial compared to my many terabytes of storage so that is not a useful feature for me.
Is WhatsApp blocking link previews for Google services?
I can't tell if the experts are essentially human tutorials or if they can actually escalate issues.
It's optional now. But, give it a few years, and no one will be allowed to use Google services without all their stuff on One.
What is new from that page?
The number of baskets to put all your eggs into.
Would love the google play etc but need g suite forown domain email
I signed up the day Google One became available since I had been looking for a cloud storage solution. I downloaded their uploader client and began backing up my files. I am sure the fact that it took over two weeks was a mix of my own ISP upload speed and maybe some limitation on how much the client could handle in terms of uploading files (I had just over half a TB to back up).
That said, the speed wasn't what bothered me. What bothered me was the stupid client kept throwing me errors constantly telling me it couldn't upload certain files (always random) and although it gave me an option to retry, I could click retry a dozen times and it wouldn't matter, it'd simply fail over and over again. My only option at this point was to skip uploading this file. If this had been a few files, that wouldn't be an issue except this was easily hundreds of files with no easy way to keep track of what successfully uploaded and what didn't.
Worse, each time it failed, it interrupted whatever I was doing to pop up a notification with the expectation of me having to select retry or skip. This was insanely annoying. I could be doing something and a notification would pop up and unless I respond, it would just sit there. Sometimes I'd be doing something and the notification would interrupt what I am doing midflow. Needless to say this was an abysmal experience.
I then tried contacting support wanting a refund and to simply cancel. First I tried chat which connected relatively fast but it was obvious the person I talked to didn't know what they were talking about. I then did phone support. To their credit they called me back within an hour though it hung up on me shortly after picking up so I then had to get them to call again and there goes another hour.
Eventually, I did get to talk to a human being but felt I was talking to someone who had very little knowledge about how anything worked. I had to get the case escalated to get the service cancelled since the department that handled that had no direct support.
After waiting about a week, I contacted support again and went through the whole motion all the while finding out it seems like the case wasn't properly escalated. Waited several more days and had to contact support again. It had to be escalated again.
During this whole ordeal, I had already stopped the client, uninstalled it, and removed any files I had uploaded.
After about another week, one day suddenly I accessed my Gmail to find a glaring message at the top that read something to the effect of me being over my storage limit and will soon be unable to receive any emails. I was pissed.
At this point they didn't contact me at all, I haven't seen any refund come through, but my access to Google One was gone so I assumed I was cancelled. But if I deleted all the files I previously uploaded, how could I be over the limit?
The only conclusion I could come up with was any photos I took on my Pixel (which came with unlimited photo storage) somehow was being read as non-Pixel photos so my photo storage blew up. I had to forcibly set it to convert all the images to the format that Google would allow that wouldn't be used against my storage space and eventually after like 2-3 hours my Gmail no longer had that glaring message that I may not receive messages due to being over my storage limit.
Now I'm painfully aware I probably could have backed up all my photos and delete them off Google Photos at this point but I was so exhausted and angry that I just took the path of least resistance here. Eventually the refund came through several days later but this was when I genuinely started to hate Google for the first time.
Hope this helps anyone on the fence about paying for Google One, especially with the expectation that you'll get support as if that'll be helpful.
I ended up going with a different cloud storage. World of difference. Never going to trust Google for anything like this ever again.