Fabled Google Drive Won't Be Another Dropbox | Hacker News Reader

Fabled Google Drive Won't Be Another Dropbox

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76 pointseror93232 comments

Ok, some of this sounds good. Store your docs and your pdfs and you can now read them online. Google can even let you search inside your own files, and even monetize it by showing you ads based on file contents.

Dropbox is not a success, in my mind, because it is cloud storage. It is a success because of shell integration. No fumbling around with browsers to upload or download files. It is seamless, I can open docs from dropbox with notepad for god's sake.

I would like to see google offer shell integration as well. Drop all your word docs in the folder and they are now in Google docs. Make some edits with word and it syncs to Google. Turn on your computer and it pulls down the latest version from Google doc.

If Google won't do it, someone else should. Hack together a windows shell extension, with git as a backend and an online doc editor.

I agree. Logging into Google and manually uploading and downloading files is not as seamless or as simple as a Dropbox client side app 'folder'(especially with the synchronization capabilities). That doesn't mean Google couldn't clone that exact functionality and be able to offer cheaper higher tier storage, but I think Google wants to see everything move to the browser, so I don't know if a local client on multiple platforms aligns with that objective.

Correct.

However, I don't thing the main problem is uploading/syncing data from your PC. Sooner or latter, the PCs will not be the main source of information / storage of information. For some small and distributed companies that is already the case.

The data which needs to be in GDocs is actually somewhere else: in your Basecamp, in your Evernote, in Dropbox, etc.

Anyway - shameless plug at the end - this is the reason I quit my job and started http://cloudHQ.net : to help companies and individuals to continuously replicate and synchronize data between cloud services. We are bootstrapped and the feedback is more than welcome.

> If Google won't do it, someone else should. Hack together a windows shell extension, with git as a backend and an online doc editor.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't Insync provide this functionality? It's not opensource, but still...

There's a lot of apps that already hack Google into a drive, Gladinet, Syncdocs, Insync

InSync already offers shell integration for Google Docs (and can be general purpose cloud storage too). It's absolutely fantastic, and spurred me to purchase more google storage.

You can do this on SkyDrive today.

Onenote & Word (and probably the rest of Office) know how to save to SkyDrive, and there are web editors for Onenote, Word (and Excel & PPT, I believe) available on SkyDrive.

Granted, it's not entirely the same as Dropbox - the client needs to know how to talk to SkyDrive, but I also think that SkyDrive knows how to communicate via Webdav, so it's probable that you could get a 3rd-party client to read/write to SkyDrive.

I haven't tried SkyDrive through WebDAV, but previously (like >1 year ago) the only way to mimic Dropbox behavior was using it in conjunction with MS Live Mesh which was another piece of software & install/config and not as elegant or simple as Dropbox. (and also could only use a portion of SkyDrive space)

I have wondered for years why simple directory syncing wasn't easier or built-in out of the box on MS products

Ironically Live Mesh started life out as FolderShare which predates Dropbox.

FolderShare was awesome and met my needs perfectly - I'm a little disappointed that MS clearly dropped the ball with transitioning it over to an internal product.

I think a lot of people are already using Google Docs as the mythical "G Drive." I use it for that purpose and store all my photos, videos, docs, etc. up there. In fact, it will even stream your videos like youtube (I cannot speak to audio as I am not a big music person).

My complaint is not that is cannot store anything you want, but that it is not integrated with their own products. If I am storing something, like a photo, in Google Docs, I should be able to publish it to Picasa or Google+, or even attach it to an email (either from the email or through Google Docs). Same with video, except this time youtube instead of Picasa.

Instead, I have to download it first and then upload it to the appropriate app.

I don't use DropBox, but I have heard it is great. But, I do use a product: https://www.insynchq.com/ to back up and sync my Google Docs locally. I don't know if that is the same.

You can use Google Music for streaming audio files but I don't think it's integrated into Google Docs, maybe that's part of what Google Drive will do?

Google drive will certainly NOT be a failure if they match the user experience of dropbox at a price that is better. Dropbox, however, should have a plan to avoid being "mapquested" by google if they want to stay relevant.

What I don't understand is why there aren't more solutions like the old jungledisk where you supply your amazon s3 keys and get a virtual drive that acts as an interface to s3.

Because the JungleDisk solution is clunky. You're either going to use Dropbox if you're a casual user or use a Linux filesystem in user space to interface to S3. JungleDisk is the purgatory no one wants to be in.

Note: I've used JungleDisk; my business partner still uses JungleDisk and complains about its shortcomings; I tell him to switch to Dropbox.

I've used jungledisk for a long time and felt they've really squandered a great opportunity (or maybe getting acquired by rackspace _was_ the opportunity in the first place).

I agree the jungledisk UX could be better, but the idea was good: run an service on the user PC that works with s3 and behaves like a hard-drive and make the user pay amazon directly for the storage and bandwidth "a-la carte." There really isn't a need for servers, why not just s3 buckets + the user machines?

I am surprised there aren't opensource solutions that just take s3 keys and make a virtual drive. Or are there?

There are solutions such that you describe, but they're FUSE filesystems for Linux, not full blown GUIs for OS X and Windows.

JungleDisk uses the server functionality for maintaing state.

Jungledisk is still around, although the pace of updates has slowed quite a bit. I like the option to choose between AWS and Rackspace too.

InSync[1] is a pretty close experience right now to using Google Docs as a Dropbox-like product. Surely Google will launch a desktop connector like InSync or otherwise buy them.

[1] www.insynchq.com

Google really doesn't get that lots of people want a separation between their public and private spaces. I wouldn't be comfortable putting my files on anything connected to Google+ and I would be more than a little creeped out to see my files appear in a Google Search. Even it's 100% secure it's just not a good idea to blur the lines. I think part of the success of Dropbox is it becomes an extension of your private space in the form of an Explorer or Finder window.

Heh, does anyone remember the outcry when Google Desktop turned up and, if you installed it, your search results started including local files?

If this happens the way the author predicts, then perhaps the solution wasn't to dial back the slightly uncomfortable privacy implications, but rather just to turn the whole thing up to eleven and store all your files.

So ... it'll be a lot like Amazon Cloud Drive then? And Microsoft's SkyDrive?

No, Amazon Cloud Drive and Microsoft SkyDrive do not have shell integration. You need to upload using a browser.

Hopefully, Google Drive will be similar to Dropbox wherein, you will have a G-Drive directory in your hard disk. Microsoft has a similar product too - it is called Live Mesh.

There IS Skydrive shell integration:

-you can easily mount a Skydrive folder and Office will recognize the file originated from Skydrive and show relevant information (e.g. other editing the file)

-Office 2010 has a 'Save to Web' function

I am curious how to mount Skydrive. All the approaches I have seen rely on unofficial tools which seem to have stopped working about 6 months back.

It would be great if you know of something that still works.

And on a Mac? Linux?

I'm unsure how this comment is helpful. The conversation goes like this:

  Person 1: Microsoft SkyDrive doesn't have shell
            support. It's browser-only.
  Person 2: Sure it has shell support, but it's
            Windows-only.
  Person 3: But it's not *CROSS-PLATFORM* shell
            support!

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman

There is a Mac version and technically you can use their official API for Linux as well.

Google Drive will fail because Google actually thinks everybody loves and trusts them. People are getting smarter, and they're starting to understand that the type of centralized cloud computing that Google is forcefully pushing on its users is the exact kind of distasteful scenario that Orwell warned us of.

People really do not want their entire digital experience curated, controlled, and highly manipulated by a centralized, autonomous entity, with zero-human interaction, and zero-support if something goes wrong.

The Google's free ice cream business model isn't going work forever. Eventually decentralized, private cloud computing is going to come along and make their entire business model obsolete.

Is this a comment on the proposed Drive or Google as a whole?

If this is about the Drive feature itself then how is Dropbox different? They have the data of all their users. In fact they know for a fact that its valuable data since the user chose to pay to back it up.

The OP's link was a speculation just like Drive speculation itself.

Google might have problems as a company but that's not as relevant to the success or failure of a Drive feature in my opinion. It all depends on the experience and cost.

My comment explains why I think Drive will fail, because of the business model of the company that is behind it. Google's advertising model necessitates evil things to be done with the content their users upload. And my prediction is users are going to start spitting up the free ice cream Google is serving.

Given your stated beliefs, wouldn't you also expect Gmail, the Google search engine, etc to be failing too? That doesn't seem to be the case.

...yet. I fully expect Gmail and Search to decline in popularity, and with it Google's profitability and viability. Users are starting to revolt, and switch to alternatives like DDG. I don't know of any good Gmail alternatives yet, but the timing is really right for some startup to come along with a better email solution.

Google may appear an unstoppable juggernaut, but they most certainly are not. I think their business is very seriously threatened because of the type of business model they've chosen.

"People really do not want..."

People or you? To me it seems that "people", as in the majority of users for such a product, don't really know or care.

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