Google Drive: Finally coming this April | Hacker News Reader

Google Drive: Finally coming this April

gigaom.com

82 pointstaylorbuley65 comments

"GDrive is the like the wolf in the fable, The Boy Who Cried Wolf. Well, after long history of false alarms, the storage drive might just see the day in early April"

So... this year, like every year since 2005, GDrive may or may not be coming.

Thanks for the update, Om.

They should play the joke for all it's worth and release it on April Fools' Day.

Gmail was launched on April first so I wouldn't put it past Google.

Google tends to reserve April Fools' Day for more amusing things. You'll have no idea if it will still be around on April 2.

http://googlesystem.blogspot.ca/2011/04/google-april-fools-d...

I really hate snarky comments like these:

One whole gigabyte? Wow!

Oh good. Now Google can mine your documents to find more ways to blast your with advertising. Buh-bye privacy.

People really need to stop bitching about privacy and the like. Nobody is stopping you from building your own server backup system in your basement with as much space as you desire. If you use this technology Google has been secretly working on for who knows how long now, for FREE, you can fucking put up with ads or minor fees if you want more space. People feel so fucking entitled these days.

No, quite the opposite. The more people value their privacy, the more pressure against invasive predatory practices and the better for all of us.

It's not a binary scale: Privacy or no progress. Services we use can respect our privacy, can be paid by subscription instead of paid by data mining and selling your whole life.

So "bitch" people and don't "fucking put up" with ads.

Everyone values their privacy.

You think Google feels any pressure from blog comments like that? Well you're wrong. It's pointless bickering - I've always disliked that about reading tech news. People who have no idea how Google even operates and the technology behind the products take for granted and who could never even write a solid business plan seem to love complaining about inane details and playing victim. I'm tired of reading it. Until you can prove Google is doing something wrong or unethical, take your free service and stop complaining. Or switch to another.

If you have criticism that can improve the product, that's different. But these are just childish whines that don't accomplish anything. If Google is overstepping some privacy line, prove it and get them some bad press, like what recently happened with Path mining peoples' contacts. But Google are not malicious predators, and nobody is forcing anybody to use their products, so people need to stop being so melodramatic.

My antivirus (that I pay for) is scanning all my personal photos. And my firewall is sniffing every packet that is going there.

Since they are already "intruding" into my "private" life, I won't mind if they show advertisements to me, if at the end they make the antivirus and firewalls free.

I think google is doing nothing different.

Agreed. All of these privacy complaints seem very overstated and melodramatic.

The key differentiator for Google Drive would be online interfaces. I love Dropbox to death, but the fact that when I am on a strange computer I have to download a spreadsheet to make a minor edit and then upload again is completely annoying. And it is mostly useless for media playing. If Google gives me a box to store/sync stuff offline and makes Google Docs/Music/Picasa seamlessly work with that box, I'd switch in a heartbeat.

On the other hand, Dropbox's integration into the native OS is one of their best selling points. If I remember correctly, they actually had to do something along the lines of code injection into Mac OSX's Finder in order to get the dropbox-centric icons and options to appear[1].

Box.net only offers desktop sync to larger clients, and other competitors have yet to beat the frictionless Dropbox experience on native computers.

The way Google could win would be auto-import from Dropbox, tight OS integration, and online editing in Docs.

1: Here at 15:30 http://blip.tv/pycon-us-videos-2009-2010-2011/pycon-2011-how...

box.net offers a webdav interface, even for their free accounts. That's an open standardized interface for box.net vs. a proprietary client for Dropbox.

True, but WebDAV clients are nowhere near the perfect user experience that the proprietary Dropbox client provides (at least on OS X and Linux, I don’t know about Windows).

If the prices are anything like what their current storage options are, it will be the best option available.

Dropbox - Current options

50 GB ($99.00 USD per year) - 100 GB ($199.00 USD per year)

Google Storage - Current Options

20 GB ($5.00 USD per year) - 80 GB ($20.00 USD per year) - 200 GB ($50.00 USD per year) - 400 GB ($100.00 USD per year) - 1 TB ($256.00 USD per year) -

Yes, I'm very happy with the storage I pay for at Google. Hard to beat $5 for 20Gb.

I hope their prices stay that low.

That said, with Dropbox's versioning of files, I can see Dropbox arguing each Gb you have there can really be much many more Gbs than what you seem to pay for.

It will be interesting to see Google's features. What I value most from dropbox is the versioning and the relatively seamless integration into the operating system.

Any of the files in Google Docs format (docs, spreadsheets, presentations, etc) already support versioning and history. I don't know how that effects the total storage however.

Files in the Google Docs format do not count against your quota. Files not in Google Docs format also support revisions, but each revision counts against your quota.

You're right about that, and I had forgotten that.

The interface seems different, the dropbox versioning appears to part of its file system, the google versioning as part of the application.

So for me, dropbox versions some blobs (truecrypt volumes) that it's not clear that google could version, unless they add a different interface to google drive (and I sure hope they do.)

But with how Dropbox stores files (de-duped), there can really much fewer GBs than what you seem to pay for. I'd say that it more than evens out, especially since large binaries are much more likely to be already stored and not versioned.

I am surprised that you left out Microsoft SkyDrive, which provides you with 25 GB for free to start with.

Not to mention that it has the office capability (arguably better from my POV), too.

I'm calculating much higher Google Storage prices (similar to yours, but per month).

https://accounts.google.com/b/0/PurchaseStorage

It's $0.33 per GB-month for all the Google storage tiers. This is the best you'll find pretty much anywhere on the Internet.

Ah. Sorry I was looking at the Google Cloud Storage rather than the consumer pricing (which was my mistake given that the context was Dropbox).

Am I the only one that saw that and thought "driverless cars this April?!"

I wish. Google could have done this (the G drive) when it was originally rumored (2006?) but instead waited until Dropbox had taken a majority stake in the market. I'm scared that their autonomous car program will have a similar fate. Google has been testing their autonomous cars for years and has logged thousands of miles, but they don't seem to have any plans to push this incredible technology to market. The largest roadblock (sorry for the pun) is probably the need for new legislation on driver-less vehicles, but even if these new laws are written soon, I am afraid Google will fail to move quickly in this exciting new market.

If legislation is the major obstacle, then what does it matter how long it takes Google? This is everyone's problem.

And according to recent news it seems it will be quite some time before cities can see automated vehicles. A bit sad to see the big technological step they accomplished being blurred by other processes.

Ditto, But also, if those driver less cars ever do finally hit the market, im refinancing my house to buy one once they hit. I will be saving such an amount of time, it would be worth 40k for me just to get into one of those cars.

It's Google. They'll be free. To make up the cost, they will just slow down near Google billboards.

Ads. In the car. With the option to buy the product or take you to the seller immediately. Billboards....HAH!

The main problem with Google Docs is that it is just too complicated - or better to say, has some rules which are quite unique.

For example, normal people get very confused that you can have multiple files with same name. Also the concept of collections is something quite broken since they represented as "folders": yes great on a paper but people assume if a document A in collection X is different document than the same document in collection Y.

I wonder how the above things will map to local filesystem without confusion.

It would be nice to see a storage system demonstrating sets instead of hierarchical disjoint partitions, that I find terribly unfit for human activities since you can't really order things this way. After 30 years of Personal Computing with `folders` it will be confusing, but I'd be interested to see if people can re-adjust and adopt collections/sets.

The collections are similar to gmail labels.

Every detail points to them providing an local client for Google Docs. Google Docs has: 1GB free, ability to upload arbitrary files, web preview of a variety of file types (videos, music, documents, etc.), an API, Google Apps integration.

Only 1 free GB? That seems highly unlikely. But if it's true, I think it will be very disappointing.

That has to be a mistake. You already can upload more than 7 GB using Google Docs. It would be more in line with Google to offer 100 GB or 1 TB free and really blow away the competition. I wonder if they have considered what it would cost to offer 1 TB of storage vs. buying Dropbox. Most people would not use anything close to the maximum and of course the storage costs will get cheaper over time.

Google needs to give people a compelling reason to try out the service. Remember when GMail launched in 2004 and 1 GB of storage space for e-mail seemed crazy? I think Hotmail offered 4 MB of space at the time. You had to constantly delete old e-mails to keep below the quota. Storing files in the cloud is reaching a tipping point where it becomes mainstream. Google needs to get a foothold now if they want to be the leader in this product category.

There's no chance of Google offering 1TB free to everyone in the world. Even with just a small minority using their full allotment (there are plenty of warez hoarders, photographers, and video makers out there), the cost would quickly balloon into the hundreds of millions.

100GB is on the outer edge of plausibility. 10-20GB would be reasonable. One is definitely not enough.

Google has $44.6 billion in cash and short term investments at their disposal. Dropbox was recently valued at $4 billion. If Google could spend hundred of millions (or even a few billion) offering tons of storage space, you would have to think might consider doing so over doing something like trying to buy Dropbox. They would become the leader in the space almost overnight. At the very least, I would expect them to offer unlimited storage for movies and music purchased in the Google Play store (similar to Amazon).

With Googles new push to have all products making money it is unlikely that Google will sink too much money into offering free Drive space.

The article actually mentions 1Gb, or equivalently 128MB. I wouldn't really consider anything written there to be worth much.

I think that that is clearly a mistype. Google would not launch with the storage in gigabits.

Doesn't Gmail already offer over 7GB of storage for free? I would be amazed if they do not match Dropbox's 2GB free offering.

Regardless, Google storage is very cheap. 80GB for $20.

https://accounts.google.com/b/0/PurchaseStorage

I'm currently storing all my backups as tar.gz files on Google Docs and am even able to upload multiple-GB files via my browser.

I finally hit the space limit on Gmail and upgraded my storage, and I couldn't believe how cheap it was. $5 for an additional 20GB -- that's practically nothing.

Per month or one time? I can't view the pricing because it wants me to sign in.

I believe it's per year, but it could be one time; don't remember, honestly.

It's per year.

Same for me.

If they allow me to stream video off my GDrive like I can with Google Music I am definitely in!

Maybe that's why Google weighed in on the Megavideo/Hotfile lawsuits.

There are other sites that offer this feature (of course, it's not quite as simple as having it all integrated on the Google platform). Check out Friendeo: http://friendeo.com

You can already do that with Google Docs.

https://support.google.com/docs/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answ...

I have been using Microsoft LiveMesh/skydrive recently alongside dropbox and it has been working flawlessly. What I like about is the huge space compared to dropbox and that you can sync multiple folders without plug-ins or anything hacky.

I use LiveMesh too, and I like it. One of the things that I like about it is that it doesn't follow symlinks. I really wish one of these sync services (maybe the upcoming Gdrive?) would treat symlinks properly. I.e., sync them opaquely rather than transparently.

In the meantime, I use scripts to sync my symlinks out of band. The only service I can do this with is LiveMesh, though, since at least it is nice enough to just ignore the symlinks, rather than do the wrong thing with them.

I wouldn't be surprised if Google did finally release the GDrive. This would follow the company's current trend of cloning successful businesses far after a competitor has established market dominance. Google+ is actually rather well built, but nobody is going to flock to it when there are numerous other social networks that have the same (or more) features. Dropbox already solves the problem that GDrive would tackle. Is GDrive going to have some killer feature that will entice people to make the switch? Probably not. Also, I'll bet GDrive won't have the platform coverage that Dropbox does, at least initially.

Moving your data is much easier than moving your entire social network. It could be a matter of installing the GDrive sync client and pointing it at the same folders you're already syncing.

But to the non-technically inclined (people who don't read reviews of file-syncing services), they'll be wondering "why do I need this when I already have something that does the same thing?"

That's where Google integration will play into it.

You need that file on your Android phone? It's there on the filesystem, no need to open another app. Want to open a file in Google Docs? You click on it in the side panel. Want to share a file on Google+? You just click the name, no upload required. Want to email multiple files through Gmail? Click on them from the nice web interface and don't waste time uploading. Want to post a video to Youtube? Select it from your GDrive, and it appears on Youtube instantly. Etc etc.

True. We'll have to wait and see, but I imagine that price and integration with other Google services will be the main benefits.

I'm very interested to see the privacy policy. Should we expect ads to be "better targeted" to the extent that we use Google Drive?

Deleted comment

You mean, like Gmail?

I'm not sure what you mean. But Livemesh/skydrive is exactly like dropbox. You choose a folder on your computer to sync and it syncs for you. I use the skydrive browser app on my android too. The surprising thing is that it has been around for a long time. But like many msft products, it is not well promoted.

Parent was about launching a product on april 1st.

Relevant: interesting HNsearch: http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=gdrive&...

I like that the first one is Drew's YC app from 5 years ago. And then: GDrive is here! in august 2007

This is an interesting story of why it was killed originally: http://allthingsd.com/20110425/how-google-killed-gdrive-and-...

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