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Comment by throwaway787544 | Hacker News Reader

Worth noting that it's not actually "Google" that said to "hang tight". An entire brand does not make a decision like whether to support Linux. It's a two-pizza team with a shitty budget and a remit to just keep the damn thing from going down and working out all the bugs with basic features like moving a file to a new folder in a weird drop-down.

I'm sure the team would like to support Linux, if they had a bigger budget, if they could get out from all of their tech debt, if they had one or two specialized engineers added to their team. But the giant corporate behemoth isn't even remotely aware of those problems, nor will it care. There would have to be a clear case that adding a Linux client would create real business value. But considering how small Linux users probably are, and without an additional revenue stream to offset the cost of development, it's a non-starter.

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I get what you're saying, but:

- The specific actions of a company will _always_ come from a specific subset of people who are interacting with and sometimes constrained by the broader organization. Should this mean that we can never talk coherently about the actions or statements of a company?

- Isn't the company overall responsible for creating the organizational constraints and obstacles? Why is that team that size? Why is that their remit, and how has it changed since _someone_ decided to say "hang tight"? Why do they have the staff they have?

I get what you're saying, but ultimately it is an issue of priority. Google has the money, they just don't choose to spend it on supporting Google Drive on Linux, even after saying they would. So, supporting Linux is by definition a lower priority than anything that did pass the bar for resource allocation in the last ten years.

You're right about the motivations: they must not view it as creating real business value, since that's how these decisions get made.

My only point here is that it IS a choice someone in an office is making: it's not worth it to support Drive on Linux. They do know about it, because it was on their radar 10 years ago. Somebody took it off their radar.

The team who made the post were representing Google, therefor the company made the post.

To propose otherwise implies that all similar actions/statements made in a similar way are not made by the company, which is both ludicrous and also causes Google to not exist.

That's why you need to use your best judgement to determine if a random employee at a company has the knowledge/power/clout to act as an official spokesperson before believing what they say...

I don't know how many M$/yr Google engineers cost, but there is at least one small software company out there (InSync) that built a multiplatform Google Drive client which, personally, has been working great for years, even on Linux (I'm just a user), for likely less than that.

It seems that headless use (NAS, VPS) requires a subscription, unfortunately.

I love Insync! Very underrated and I wish more people knew about it!!

Maybe they could ship a linux app instead of deprecating and replacing the mac app next time :)

Though Linux might be a small platform it's the only one that really matters.

It apparently does not, since lack of Linux support hasn't killed the product.

> it's the only one that really matters

Demonstrably not.

The thinking was probably more along the lines of "no one ever got promoted for filling out the basic feature set of a file share me too service" and that promotion is what's standing between them and an extra 9000 pizzas a year worth of salary. With a bonus hint of "nobody cares what somebody promised that left the team a year ago after a year of working on it".

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