Microsoft Plans Gdrive Competitor

gambit3 writes "From Microsoft Watch: The MSN team is working on a new Windows Live service, code-named Live Drive, that will provide users with a virtual hard drive for storing hosted personal data. From early accounts, it sounds an awful lot like Gdrive, the still-as-yet-publicly-unannounced storage service from Google."

Comments

in what way is it like a non-existant product?

[gralem]

I would say it's more like Apple's iDisk. But that's my weakness--I tend to compare things to products and features rather than rumors.

---gralem

Re:Apple

[SamTheButcher]

Thank you! That's the first thing I thought of. It even has something called iDisk, since the year 2000. (It helps if you say that last part like they do on Conan O'Brien)

Let's talk with our friends and relatives NOW.

[Anonymous Coward]

As computer-literate individuals, it is our duty to talk to our less computer-savvy friends and relatives about these types of services.

While it may seem very obvious to us, they might not stop to consider the privacy aspects of these services, be they from Google, Apple, or Microsoft.

First of all, we need to make it clear that no financial data should be stored in such a way. That includes spreadsheets and archived tax filings.

Second of all, any personal documentation should not be placed on such remote drives. This is especially important for the employees of businesses.

Third of all, it must be realized that nothing will ever truly be deleted from such remote drives. One may think they have deleted their files, but it's quite likely that those files still exist on some server somewhere at Google or Microsoft, if not on backup tapes.

We need to have these dicussions now, before many people make costly mistakes. It will save us time and effort in the long run, if we can wake up enough people to the potential issues that arise when using these services.

Re:Let's talk with our friends and relatives NOW.

[bob65]

As computer-literate individuals, it is our duty to talk to our less computer-savvy friends and relatives about these types of services

How does being computer-literate have anything to do with the "privacy aspects of these services"? Secondly, people aren't dumb ok? If *you* realize the pitfalls of storing archived tax filings on these drives, so does *everyone else* that knows enough about modern society to use such an online service.

Re:Let's talk with our friends and relatives NOW.

[TheSloth2001ca]

woulditbe possible for MS or google to implement a system where the data is encrypted on their servers... BUT the key is on your computer (or a usb stick).

I am not an expert but maybe someone who is could figure out how to do this.

This assumes MS and google care about privacy

Re:Let's talk with our friends and relatives NOW.

[Maset]

encrypt, encrypt, encrypt.

If it is a matter of national security (for the U.S.A.) then the NSA will crack it. Otherwise the DOD and FBI will not crack it and you are fine from Homeland Security.

If you are a suspect of a transnational or just a national (against the U.S.A. or one of her favoured partners) then look out, because all your electric communications will be deciphered.

For the rest of us, strong encryption is enough to ward off lazy perusal.

You'd have to be a fool to use something like this

[kcbrown]

...for anything other than data that you have absolutely no problem with becoming completely public. That, and the fact that you have that data (association like that is itself a form of information that can be of great interest to some).

I don't care how good they claim their "safeguards" are, they're not going to be as good as they claim, and in any case the companies that host these services are not to be trusted. They do only that which is in their best interests, not yours. Those may be the same thing for a time, but I promise you that's temporary at best.

Worthless

[rudy_wayne]

A "virtual hard drive" is worthless because:

1 - most Internet Service Providers severely cripple your upload speed, so getting large amounts of data to the virtual hard drive is impractical

B - If yuo share you files with too many people, i.e. use too much bandwidth, they'll surely shut you down.

Re:Worthless

[eMartin]

Right.

It's almost more useless now than it was when I was using my iDisk 5 years ago on dialup.

Re:Worthless

[mh101]

Unless you're wanting to speedily send a file to someone, I can't see that having a much lower upload speed would be that big a deal.

If I want to open a video clip stored on one of these remote drives, it's definitely annoying if I have to wait a minute for enough of the file to be downloaded to start playing the video. But if I have the same video that I want to upload to a remote drive, it's no big deal if I start the transfer, then go and do something else while it's quietly uploading in the background.

Now if someone was foolish enough to use it as a working drive (i.e. the video you're currently editing, or the source code for your project) then it would be very slow going. But you'd just have to do the editing on a local copy, then save it to the remote drive and you'd be fine.

Why do people keep saying other's have done it...

[AdityaG]

Why the hell do people yell "OMG it's been done before..." everytime someone comes out with something. More competition is always good. If Microsoft screws it up, well that's too bad, but if it doesn't, hey, we will have another nice service to choose between.

Google should 'fight back'

[LetterRip]

If I were google I'd start getting openoffice as much publicity as possible, and other things that compete directly with Microsofts bread and butter. Find microsofts worst nightmare for each niche, opensource it and heavily support and distribute it.

LetterRip

Re:You'd have to be a fool to use something like t

[spagetti_code]

This would provide the most amazing trolling database ever. Can you imagine the glee within the govt at being able to freely scan every file "owned" by every member of the public.

And dont think it wont happen because the Patriot act permits data trolling without telling the user (go and talk to you public library - they have to hand over data about you and they are not allowed to tell you).

Can you imagine the conversation...

GW: I need access you your Live Drive for anyone named 'ahmed' or 'abbus' or 'abdul' or ... hell just give me it all!
BillG: sure - if you can call off your anti-trust watchdogs
GW: consider it done. What is anti-trust anyway??

Can we manage to get real?

[3seas]

personal and private data held on an internet accessible drive?

Can you say oxymoron?

Re:You'd have to be a fool to use something like t

[kavau]

When will people stop stating the obvious? Of course nobody in their right mind should put sensitive information onto a service like this. But there are plenty of appropriate uses for this: photos, videos (G-rated ones, at least), recipes, homework, etc.

The only problem I'm seeing is that many of these things are already covered by existing, specialized services.

I gotta say

[Parham]

It seems like every new service Google provides is shortly later also provided by Microsoft. Story after story, Google does something then Microsoft follows. Why do they feel the need to play catchup all the time? Why can't they instead try and be a little innovative? Also, why do they feel the need to follow Google all the time when they're primarily (this is subjective) in the OS business? Stop playing catchup and release Vista on time. Had to get that off my chest.

Why is Microsoft Bothering?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anybody else find it strange that Microsoft is bothering with things like this without worrying about spending more effort/time into getting Vista out?

Much different than emailing yourself files?

[Canis Latrans]

I've personally found the "GMail Drive" (http://www.viksoe.dk/code/gmail.htm) quite useful for sending files to myself between work and home. Effectively this program just provides a nice filesystem-like interface for emailing a file to yourself using GMail.

There seem to be a lot of naysayers and negativity towards the idea of an online file system, and I wonder whether it is really warranted.

To those who say that an online file system is "worthless" because bandwidth is too low, or because of privacy issues, I ask you if you have ever emailed yourself a file so that you could pick it up somewhere else. The argument that I am making here is that if you are using a mail server as a file server, then you already using an online file system.

Sure, no online file system is going to have the bandwidth of a local hard drive. That's why you don't email yourself 700 MB mpeg movie files. Does that mean it's worthless to ever be able to email yourself a file? I don't think so. There are lots of files that are small enough to send over email yet big enough to contain interesting information. By extension, there are lots of files that are small enough to store on an online file system and still be useful.

Sure, no online file system is going to ever be able to guarantee complete security. That's why you don't email your tax documents and your credit card number to yourself. Does that mean it's worthless to be able email yourself files? Not at all. It just means that you always have to take into account the possibility that your information may get into the wrong hands. This is true for any file system. If instead of storing your files on an online file system you bring a USB key around everywhere you go, you still have to think about what will happen if you leave it in the wrong place and someone else finds it. Just ask the guys selling the USB keys in the bazaar in Afghanistan about that. So, if you can trust the security of your email provider for certain kinds of information, should you not be able to trust the security of on online filesystem provider?

In my opinion, it's a good thing that services like this are being offered, just as it is a good thing that there are free web mail services. But anytime you leave your data with someone else, you need to ask yourself how much you trust them to take care of it, and you need to balance the convenience of easy access against the risk of the data falling into the wrong hands.

Is a Microsoft online file service trustworthy enough to store your data on? Judging by their past security record on Hotmail, I would say don't put too much trust in them. You also have consider that they are a likely target for hackers just because they are a big target. But I would have no qualms about storing, say, photos from my vacation on a hotmail account... or, by extension, on an online file system that was connected to my Hotmail account. So, my point is that even a not-so-trustworthy MSN Live Drive from Microsoft is not worthless.

Gdrive?

[Jugalator]

From early accounts, it sounds an awful lot like Gdrive, the still-as-yet-publicly-unannounced storage service from Google.

Is Gdrive even planned for sure?

Funny to compare with a rumored service in the title if not.