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Google Docs To Host Any File Type
ezabi writes "According to a post on the official Google blog, in the coming weeks Google Docs will offer to host all file types with a limit of 250 MB, which as they say is larger than the current limit for email attachments. This will have its consequences: paid file sharing will die, more shared pirated material, newer vulnerabilities and malware distribution channels..."
p2p users are targeted heavily by the anti piracy groups because p2p users are comprised largly by individuals with very shallow pockets.Google could potentially even the playing field here.
...Not to say that Google is doing it for this reason...or that piracy is justified. Just saying a company with this much influence could change the media industry's approach on combatting illegal activities.
As in "bugs or missing features that are existing now for years without being addressed."
The biggest shortcoming I see is a lack of proper versioning. Docs will save every stupid edit you make every few seconds creating hundreds and hundreds of divergent versions. Utterly useless for tracking changes in drafts over time. The solution is fairly simple. You get a button up at the top that tells you which draft you're in. Click on it and you can spawn a new draft. So you start with your rough draft. When that's complete, you say "new draft" and here's your second draft. You can invite people to comment on a draft by draft basis. If you'd like, you could saw "I'm spawning off Joe's draft since he's going to make edits." If he's not going to edit, just comment, then you can let him have a go at the second draft. Then you can move on to your third draft, fourth, etc.
At this point in time the only solution is to manually create a new file called second draft, third draft, keep them all in the project folder and then manually compare changes. Kind of defeats the aweseomeness of docs here. Of the features I use in Word, this is the only place where Word has docs beat. Of course, nobody I know can use the comments and revisioning tools worth a damn so I'm not really getting proper mileage out of them. *sigh*
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
They cost money because it costs money to share data. Or did you think bandwidth, servers, and storage were free?
Users pay their ISP's for the bandwidth, can install a free OSS server on just about any machine, and with 2T drives available store data at a very reasonable cost. Again, vulnerabilities and malware are really the only downsides.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Combined with Manymoon this looks like a serious contender to pricey online project management services like Backpack. Lack of artificial user limits is what makes Google strategy such an attractive proposition.
will now become "Gdoc plz?"
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
Is the summary a troll or just an attempt at sarcasm?
It's an attempt to rationalize the situation, while interpreting the facts as the "ezabi" and/or the editors see them. Nothing so heinous as a troll, or overplayed as sarcasm.
There are plenty of free filesharing sites
All of which that I've seen have some limitations. Either you pay, or your bandwidth is capped, or you're limited to $files per $timeperiod, or $megabytes per $timeperiod, etc. As ezabi and/or the editors and I see it, it's unlikely Google is going to be quite as annoying or limited as they are with this regard. It's willing to subsidize the cost of the bandwidth for mindshare and long-term money. (ie, "Google's file service is so great I'll probably just use their other services too"). A free service from a household name with less frustrating limitations could very well grab the market.
and 250mb is pretty paltry by their standards
When you hit the filesize limit at most other file sharing sights, it's common to split the file into multiple files (usually via rar). That should work here - the limit isn't a big issue if Google lets you download the partial-files one after another. Consider youtube's length limit, and how it's circumvented by simply making a play list with multiple limited-length videos.
Even more important is the likely scenario that Google ups the limit as the service matures. Remember how much gmail used to allow at first? Take a look at what they offer now. It's not a reach to imagine a similar thing happening here. Harddrives are cheap, and Google has tones of experience scaling that up.
not to mention the fact that Google has pretty decent standards for who it lets have an account.
I'm guessing you've never read any comment ever on youtube? Google fights bots, but with humans it plays fast and loose with accounts, I'm not sure where you got the idea otherwise.
Given the amount of information they have on everyone, it's the last site you want to know if you're doing something illegal.
Despite the fact that they eventually gave in to China for censorship and various music and movie IP's on youtube, Google has been a pretty big advocate of such freedoms (well, from Big Brother and Big Media - not necessarily from Big Search Engine/Advertisement Service). They fought China, Viacom, et al on the issues before giving in, and they've fought the US on such issue as well (no links handy, hopefully another /.'er can oblige). Honestly, I'd be more inclined to trust Google with my info then a random filesharing service, if I had to trust anyone.
But here's the cool thing - you can log out, or make an account just for shady stuff and switch between the two. Heck, doesn't Chrome have some sort of privacy mode? Yes, Google could match the IP with past account info and maybe put two and two together. Even so, the idea that you're using Google vs $random_fileshare_sight doesn't really increase the odds of getting caught.
Or you could just keep it legal d:
It's possible Google is willing to ruin its still pretty solid reputation for user-rights by using this to hunt down illegal file sharers, and it's possible that Google will put huge limits and allow other services to compete, but those are both pretty long shots if you think it through and don't know anything relevant that I don't.
"A witty saying proves nothing." - Voltaire
How long before we see a FUSE plugin that lets you treat this like an NFS server?
(or did I miss it, and one already exists?)
I put it on MY server, so that I own it.
I still don’t get why anyone would be so crazy to host anything important on a company’s server. Especially one that is known as the ultimate data kraken.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
I'm waiting for the Duplicity plugin!
Encrypted backups, for half the money Amazon S3 charges...
Since Google is a US company, does that mean that any documents I store online from Canada are subject to perusal by DHS as well?
That sinking feeling deep in your gut when you KNOW you screwed up bad summed up with: {head desk} {head desk}
Yes. I doubt the file size limit is there because Google doesn't like big files, it's there because it's hard on the infrastructure to upload/download bigger files in one step.