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Google Unofficially Announces GDrive By Leaked Code
An anonymous reader writes "Google has unofficially announced the GDrive by source code. In an in-direct way, Google has publicly advertised the new, much-anticipated online storage drive called the GDrive. If you take a look at the source code of some javascript within the Google Pack, you will clearly see the GDrive referenced. The code categorizes the GDrive as an 'Online file backup and storage' device. It also provides the following descriptions; 'GDrive provides reliable storage for all of your files, including photos, music and documents' and 'GDrive allows you to access your files from anywhere, anytime, and from any device — be it from your desktop, web browser or cellular phone.'"
I know that Google is all about introducing new (usually useful) services which tie into its already existing sites and services, and for that I applaud it. However I hope that it takes privacy, security, and encryption into account for this new online storage service. It's one thing to do a search with Google's engine - trusting Google with personal files is another issue entirely.
Also, here's hoping for a rich desktop client instead of just a Web interface.
Most men are not thought unwise until they speak.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dm_crypt
Give them my data? Not bloody likely. Poke around with some free storage for non-critical applications? Sure, sounds fun.
Duplicity, a clever backup tool, has let you use Gmail boxes for a storage engine for a while now. I'm sure they are just taking the next logical step. Of course, you can assume that they will probably index your files in some way, even if it isn't made public.
Cool! Amazing Toys.
I know this is not officially released by Google but I would rather have Google get Gmail out of beta. My school would like to move to Gmail but the "beta" label is a show stopper on this front. What do you think?
I've been using the GMail Drive Shell Extansion for quite a while now. Google must have liked it as well.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
"First things first -- but not necessarily in that order"
-- The Doctor, "Doctor
Description: Use your GMail account as a filesystem
GmailFS provides a mountable Linux filesystem which uses your Gmail
account as its storage medium. GmailFS is a Python application and
uses the FUSE userland filesystem infrastructure to help provide the
filesystem, and libgmail to communicate with Gmail.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
How did you get modded informative?
When Bush was talking about wanting search data for all US citizens, Microsoft, Yahoo and AOL handed it over without even really being asked. Google refused, and said they would not hand over any search data unless they were forced to do so by a court of law. Google has also since decided to anonymize their logs sooner and increase their privacy policies.
The only time Google has handed data over to a government agency was one case in Brazil, when they were forced to do so by a court, and even then, they didn't do it immediately when they were first ordered to do so. And that case was when Google had evidence on a child porn ring who distributed child porn via Orkut.
So please, explain to me how can you justify statements with no basis on fact?
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Gmail doesn't use Gmail.com.
It doesnt?
Weird. Did you perhaps mean gmail doesn't exclusively use gmail.com?
I work for Google. In a project closely related to "GDrive". And I know for an absolute fact that you, sir, are full of shit. Google is the one company that has stood up to our government's "requests for information" and said, "Show me the subpoena." Hell, that's one of the big reasons I work at Google. As for your privacy, the only entities that can see the actual content of your files are 1) you, 2) the ads analysis program, 2) Google developers/system maintenance staff who sign a blood oath that they will not violate user trust, and 3) government agencies that provide a lawful warrant or subpoena for the data. The moment that list fails to be complete, a significant fraction of all Google employees will leave in disgust.
http://pages.google.com/
The more you know, the less you understand.
TrueCrypt is an excellent solution, its only drawback is that you have to specify fixed-size containers. Because the GDrive won't be NTFS, you can't use TC's sparse file option. There are some ways of making containers that can expand to fill up whatever quota Google gives a person:
If on Linux, you could use EncFS.
OS X can use EncFS + FUSE, or one can use the Disk Image tool and create a sparse bundle image which is in actuality a directory with 8MB files (called bands) under it. When something is changed, only the relevant changes to that 8MB band are propagated, which both allows for the image to dynamically expand and be easily backed up. You can also use PGP and PGPDisk. So, you have three good options.
With Windows you will need a commercial solution: PGPDisk creates expanding drive images that expand as files are saved to them.
There are other options too. You can use 7Zip, WinRAR, or PKZip for decent (AES-128) encryption for archives and store those.
Nobody claims something is 100% without flaw. Read your licenses, disclaimers and terms of service sometime. Google's "beta" products work better and more consistently than most of the "real" releases out there, regardless of what they choose to call it.
I suppose this was just meant to be another "zomg all of Google is in beta!" joke, which hasn't been particularly funny for years. Kudos on somehow getting an interesting mod for it.
Eh, I have found it to be horrendesly slow and quite unreliable, as the files I put in frequently come back out differently.
If you want a couple gigabytes of online storage for free that's got a multi-platform client for regular syncing, you can already have it:
https://spideroak.com/
At least these guys encrypt your data instead of processing and farming it for marketing data and advertising cues. Ugh. What part of our lives aren't we going to hand over to google?