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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..."

12 of 186 comments (clear)

  1. About split by ls671 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    > host all file types with a limit of 250 MB,

    Can we just use split to store larger files ?

    split -a 5 -b 250000000 bigfile

    --
    Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
    1. Re:About split by mweather · · Score: 4, Funny

      You must work for a hard drive manufacturer.
      Here's the correct way to do it:
      tar -zc bigfile | split -a 5 -b 262144000 -

  2. Microsoft has something similar by PCM2 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Microsoft is moving into the ad-supported online hosting biz with SkyDrive. Looking at my SkyDrive right now, it tells me I have 24.99GB available space (I'm not really using it for anything). Among other uses, once Office 2010 ships, SkyDrive will be a portal to the Office 2010 Web Apps. If you upload Office documents to your SkyDrive, you will be able to click on them and view/edit them in your browser, without owning your own copy of Office.

    --
    Breakfast served all day!
  3. This will also enable terrorists by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Before evil google did this evil thing, terrorists were forced to use rar to chunk their nefarious plans into sizes small enough for email attachments, or use horrible file sharing services like rapidshare which only makes them hate the west even more. Now their plans for global sharia will be made easier thanks to their malevolent brothers-in-arms over at google.

    I hope those evil doers over at live workspace don't read this news because sharepoint is an even eviler tool for pirates and malware authors and satan himself.

  4. Re:Will these be all public too? by noidentity · · Score: 5, Informative

    Paid file sharing dying would be a good thing, people shouldn't have to pay to share what is theirs.

    They cost money because it costs money to share data. Or did you think bandwidth, servers, and storage were free?

  5. Re:What? by PCM2 · · Score: 5, Informative

    250mb is pretty paltry by their standards

    It's not 250MB total storage space. It's 250MB maximum per file. It's probably true that most e-mail clients/servers do a poor job of handling 250MB attachments. In that sense, this is probably a good thing; we've all complained about the coworker who sends out a 15MB movie of their kids playing with the dog to a mailing list, but what option do most average users have? Even if they know what FTP is, they don't own any servers. If Google is going to handhold consumers through the process of storing big files in the Web instead of sending them as attachments, I say bravo.

    --
    Breakfast served all day!
  6. counterplex the idiot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Boggle.

    It is so sad to get these reminders of just what a bunch of ignorant people fill the Net like counterplex.

    Let's just refresh everyone's memory of searchable Google Voice:

    * Google implemented search for Google Voice for people who decided to make their stuff public

    * Dumbasses in the media tried to spin it as some sort of privacy violation

    * Articles came out stating why the idiots babbling about privacy violation were spewing garbage since the only Google Voice stuff being indexed was stuff people decided to make public

    * Same dumbasses in the media came out with 'yeah, but...I still want to be mad at Google followup articles'

    Idiots like counterplex obviously just read the sensational headlines and parrot them as their own 'insight' into future stories.

  7. thwarting of malware and piracy by Google brains? by adosch · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Knowing Google, I'm sure they have actually thought about the repercussions of allowing all types of documents to be hosted/uploaded, or paving the way for mal/spy/shitware and alike or piracy. As much as everyone is going to look at the negatives, I"m sure Google has developed some sort of scalable trolling application to look for patterns or heuristics for that type of thing. After all, is Google not the king of the hill when it comes to data mining, pilfering, trends, habits, popularity of all of us already?

  8. Pricing info by FleaPlus · · Score: 5, Informative

    It doesn't seem that anyone else commenting on the article has noticed this yet, but if you click through to the Google Docs blog it has the pricing info:

    http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2010/01/upload-and-store-your-files-in-cloud.html

    Instead of emailing files to yourself, which is particularly difficult with large files, you can upload to Google Docs any file up to 250 MB. You'll have 1 GB of free storage for files you don't convert into one of the Google Docs formats (i.e. Google documents, spreadsheets, and presentations), and if you need more space, you can buy additional storage for $0.25 per GB per year. This makes it easy to backup more of your key files online, from large graphics and raw photos to unedited home videos taken on your smartphone. You might even be able to replace the USB drive you reserved for those files that are too big to send over email.

    Combined with shared folders, you can store, organize, and collaborate on files more easily using Google Docs. For example, if you are in a club or PTA working on large graphic files for posters or a newsletter, you can upload them to a shared folder for collaborators to view, download, and print.

    Again, after the 1gb limit, that $0.25 per gb-yr. By comparison, Amazon S3 is $0.15*12=$1.80 per gb-yr, almost an order of magnitude more expensive.

  9. FUSE by johnkzin · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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?)

  10. Re:Will these be all public too? by EzInKy · · Score: 4, Insightful


    Rampant file sharers pay good money for hardware that enables them to share their stolen software and pirated content.

    Your software was stolen? Are you sure you didn't just misplace it? Scan your drives again to make sure it's really gone.


    The average torrent junkie doesn't buy 8TB of disk and upgraded bandwidth plans because they really like sharing Linux ISOs...Please.

    I can see it now. ACTA paragraph 666 - no person shall possess more than 640kb of storage without a license. That, after all, is enough for anybody.

    --
    Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
  11. Re:Will these be all public too? by noidentity · · Score: 5, Funny

    Your software was stolen? Are you sure you didn't just misplace it? Scan your drives again to make sure it's really gone.

    Once I found some stolen software and downloaded it so I could burn it on a CD and return it to its owner. He wasn't interested, for some reason. I even offered to mail it to him. I don't think he had bought new software, either, so I guess he just didn't need it anymore. People are confusing when it comes to stolen software.