Slashdot Mirror
Google Close To Launching Cloud Storage 'Google Drive'
MrSeb writes with this selection from ExtremeTech: "Why doesn't Google offer a cloud storage service to rival Dropbox, Box.net, or Microsoft's SkyDrive? Google has the most internet-connected servers in the world, the largest combined storage of any web company, and already offers photo storage (Picasa), document storage (Docs), music storage (Music), but for some reason it has never offered a unified Google Drive. According to people familiar with the matter, however, our wait is almost over: Google's Hard Drive In The Sky is coming soon, possibly 'within weeks.' Feature-wise, it sounds like Google Drive will be comparable to Dropbox, with free basic storage (5GB?) and additional space for a yearly fee."
I thought Google Drive would be reserved for the self driving cars! ;)
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
I imagine storing a 5GB Truecrypt volume would result in ads for tinfoil hats :)?
Who will trust their files to a .com located in the USA?
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
I wonder if this will also finally allow google apps for business domains to have centrally managed storage? Or will this still be tied to individual user accounts like the current storage facilities? The current scenario of tying storage to individual user accounts is a major oversight by google IMO.
Ooooh 5 Gigs!
Microsoft for all of the bashing it takes gives 25 GB for free. It can be mounted like a network drive, etc.
More ways for Google to know what you're doing. Will they be scanning your documents? Checking the artist names of the songs you have there and target ads related to them?
I don't understand why this has been flagged as "Flamebait", it is the central question for such a service : would Google analyze your documents to provide targeted advertisement, or would they treat your "GDrive" as a black box ?
The former would not be acceptable for many persons (including me), but the latter would provide no upside for Google....
If docs, pictures and music are covered, might as well call it Google Porn Drive.
They'd have to offer me more than 5gb for free if they want me to give up my Dropbox.
What with the recent Dropbox mobile app give-away, linking my account to Twitter, posting a spam tweet, deleting spam tweet, completing their 'training', getting a couple of friends to join... I have 8gb for free.
If Google could match that 8gb and provide typical Google upload and download speeds, I would swap. Dropbox is too slow at time.
As for privacy: what the fucking hell are you lot storing of free sites like this? Just stick MP3s, AVIs, MKVs, and MP4s on there. If you must store documents, encrypt.
And that almost sounds like preaching to the choir. Something no one on here should be doing.
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
Free files for everyone!
GoogleFS on top of FUSE in Linux has allowed mounting the space that you store Google docs in for quite some time. This whole time I kept wondering, "why isn't anyone writing a GUI for this for Windows and Mac users" so they're not left out in the cold. (Not entirely true with Mac users as FUSE works there too)
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
I drives people to use Google more? The same could be said of Picasa or Docs. In Docs, in particular, Google does not appear to do anything with the contents of your documents (there's not even advertising on the Docs page), and that's a much easier situation for them than if they're providing storage.
...the latter would provide no upside for Google...
That would imply that a service like Dropbox, which doesn't do advertising at all, could not possibly make money off of offering cloud storage, yet they do.
You could try using client-side encryption, but I have read that Dropbox either prohibit client-side encryption in their terms or drop customers that use it extensively, as it breaks their file de-duplicating model and they therefore have to provide many times more disk space and bandwidth for these customers.
Nope, nothing in Dropboxes T&C's to limit you from using client-side encryption, and no instances reported of users being dropped from the service for anything other than blatant copyright infringement or illegal activities (virus or spam dissemination from the public folder for example).
I use TrueCrypt extensively with my Dropbox, have done for several years now - its a 40GB container which gets regularly altered as I do a lot of stuff inside of it. It has never earned me any contact from the Dropbox team, and indeed the team do recommend using such tools on the forums from time to time.
Your concerns with Dropbox are very wide of the mark, currently.