With an official description, Google Drive is more real than ever | Hacker News Reader

With an official description, Google Drive is more real than ever

venturebeat.com

31 pointsfroo21 comments

I think this is the most clear-cut case of people getting excited about a product solely because the brand name is Google.

Online file storage is boring. Dropbox is free and works really, really well.

Sound's like someone hasn't been keeping up with the GDrive rumours.

From what is being suggested, is that Google will be giving people the equivalent of dropbox's premium services... for free.

I think dropbox is great, I have a free account and use it all the time, I'd like to get a premium account if my needs ever get to that point - but if Google can provide significantly more space + their brand recognition, it's going to be hard to compete with.

Dropbox is only free for 2GB, not much if you want to back up photos.

DropBox are excellent. But I'll move to Google the moment they will provide the service because I'm using Android (Assuming that an Android client will be coming out)

In the mean time one can use http://www.jungledisk.com/ it keeps stuff in S3, looks like a local disk drive, client-side encryption, standard amazon s3 rates + $20 for software itself.

You can also give your key to their middle-tier server and have web access to your files.

I love dropbox, but if google release basically the same thing, how are dropbox going to survive?

1) Be a better piece of software 2) Get acquired by someone who wants to compete with Google 3) Have enough customers to stay profitable even if Google has a larger userbase.

Google doesn't have a monopoly, even in its core offerings like search and e-mail. There will always be space for other players.

I would suspect that Dropbox has a pretty fanatic group of fans out there. I'm one: Dropbox saved my ass when Boot Camp wrecked my hard drive. 7 years of documents were all saved, even though I'd deleted them from Dropbox previously. That's an incredible service. I recommend it to everybody who needs a good way to store stuff online, or share stuff.

Google isn't omnipotent. Orkut was a terrible social network because they just didn't get what to do. I'd guess same goes with that animated world they made that just recently closed. While they're powerful, it's really hard to beat out a truly stellar product, and Dropbox is one of the best I've seen.

Not that I like or use Orkut, but keep in mind it's the #1 social network in some countries. The story has to be a bit more complicated than "it's terrible, they just didn't get it."

I've never understood why it's so popular in those countries. It really is an awful site, and they really don't get it. Given a choice between Orkut and MySpace, most people would go for the featureset in MySpace first. Orkut v. Facebook is a goodbye-Google slaughter.

I've never understood why it's so popular in those countries.

That's probably because you don't understand the cultures of those countries. Just because something is attractive to an American does NOT mean it's going to be attractive to everyone else in the world. When a specific social networking site becomes popular somewhere, it may just be that it provides a user experience that the folks in that place truly value.

It's hard to compete with free. Google can afford to undercut Dropbox.

Many people view free as a reason not to use a service.

Clearly, if I was going to use the service as disaster recovery, I'd pay for dropbox. (I use dropbox for free right now)

Google's services are synonymous with free. I don't see many people freaked out by it.

Competing with Google is like competing with MS in '90s... a really hard proposition.

I don't see many people freaked out by it.

Depends on your circle really. For personal stuff, I make full use of google. However for anything business related my leash of trust would be a lot shorter. I'd feel much more comfortable to pay for a service that gives me someone to blame/sue should the response to a disaster be less than adequate. You really just don't get this with google.

I don't pay for Dropbox. Its free service is more than enough for me.

Will you switch if Google offers you more space and better integration with their apps? Imagine being able to access & edit your Gdrive files from Google Docs and Gmail, for example. I think this is where Google's going with this.

No. I dislike Google Docs, I use Mail.app for Gmail, and 2GB is enough for me.

I agree with you in some ways. When it comes to online storage/sync, there is a significant element of trust involved. I wonder both about security of the data and whether or not the company itself will be around in several years.

Whichever has the better, broader Linux support gets my business.

Last I looked, Dropbox required I use Nautilus, whereas I prefer Konqueror (I'm running Kubuntu).

Google just needs to acquire Dropbox and scale them out.

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