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Comment by whiplash451 | Hacker News Reader

Genuine question: do you really need to put things in folders in google drive given how good their search engine is?

This can be a way to lock users in, as it’s probably more painful to migrate thousands of unorganized files to a new platform.

It’s basically lock-in through search performance.

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I don't use Google Drive, but I can tell you that, for my use case, folders are useful for keeping notes, spreadsheets, and other resources for each project separate from each other. Search and Stars won't be adequate replacement for folders.

Not the same person, but for me, it's vital. I use my filesystem like a librarian uses a catalog, I don't want to lose that metadata and lump all my files in the same bag but with tags and searches. I know exactly where everything is.

I mean, give me directory tree, and a search field with tags, and I'm much more likely to find what I need faster with the former.

If you're looking for a file, or a bunch of files, but you only remember the name of a different file in the directory... then absolutely, yes.

This is my usual case. I recall it have some snippet that I’ll use as a “key” to find the larger project it was part of.

I’ve got quarterly reports going back years with a folder for each quarter. The file contents are so similar that searching for a specific quarter would just bring them all up. Much quicker to drill down by folder.

If you mount it on your regular machine then it's kind of necessary.

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