Hacker News Reader

Comment by noibl | Hacker News Reader

I think the GDrive cancellation in particular highlights a real problem at Google: the tendency to have a much clearer idea of what they want users to be doing than of what users want to do.

Generic cloud storage could be a great bridge between the way the vast majority of people are used to working with data (as files) and the plethora of online services that can make that data useful in (to the user) unforeseen ways. But because the Google future is so dazzling, it's not enough to step into it. One must leap.

View on HN

[I agree.] The problem is see is that there's a long tail of reasons why we will still need files, at least for the next few years. By providing an acceptable solution to "the file problem", users might more easily break free of a Windows desktop-centric world. Instead, there will be a handful of use cases holding each potential ChromeOS adoptor back, but the the total number of reasons will be unfathomably large.

By the same logic, shouldn't Google be abandoning "cloud printing"? Isn't printing stuff out so 1990's?

I'm curious, do you agree with Steve Jobs when he states, "a lot of the time, people don't know what they want until you show it to them"?

I disagree, the 'no file' approach is the forward looking one, beyond DropBox type thing. Why sync files to local machines when they are already accessible through the cloud? that's the 'leap'.

I'm not sure what you're disagreeing with.

Edit: I think I understood the rationale but it's blinkered. It's Google's business to find out why such transitions are difficult or unattractive to users and to smooth the way. To answer your question, why sync, an example is data portability. While most computer users have never heard the term, they do have an intuitive understanding of the kinds of problems that can happen when you don't have a local copy of your stuff, as almost happened with the Google Video screw-up. Whether problems like this are real or permanent isn't the most relevant fact, it's that people experience them.

If I understand correctly you suggest that it was a mistake not having launched GDrive as a gate-way service to their 'no file' vision, but I agree with their approach to focus on developing the services that will eventually remove the need for files.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com