Google Drive Launching Next Week With 5GB Free Space

An anonymous reader writes "The Next Web is reporting that Google Drive, the search giant's long anticipated cloud storage service, is set to launch next week. From the article: 'What's interesting though is that Google is planning to start everyone with 5 GB of storage. Of course you can buy more, but that trumps Dropbox's 2 GB that is included with every account. Dropbox does make it easy to get more space, including 23 GB of potential upgrades for HTC users. What's also interesting is the wording related to how the system will work. It's been long-thought that Windows integration will come easy, but that getting the Google Drive icon into the Mac a la Dropbox would be a bit harder. From what we're reading, Google Drive will work "in desktop folders" on both Mac and Windows machines, which still leaves the operation question unanswered.'"

Comments

Google Drive

[StevenBielberg]

There are two large, very real problems with Google Drive. For starters Google has a long history of abandoning projects after they fail to gain users on them. This would be a huge problem with cloud storage like Google Drive.

I also fail to see why this would get any good amount of users even if Google did advertise it correctly - unlike their search engine, gmail and youtube, cloud storage is nothing new. There are tons of companies offering their services with ridiculously low profit margins. Hell, most of them are free for home users, and I really wouldn't trust Google with my company or work data - I would use a professional hosting service with SLA and company that has no need to mine my data.

Lastly, but even more so importantly, putting everything for Google to datamine and crawl is just stupid. They already know so much - hell, they track Slashdot too. On top of that Google has serious problem with anti-competition regulators and this is just going to make those issues worse when Dropbox and other companies will demand Google to stop leveraging their search engine against them. They already have this problem in other markets.

Re:Google Drive

[Anonymous Coward]

>> unlike their search engine, gmail and youtube, cloud storage is nothing new.

Because email was a new phenomenon when Gmail launched?

Re:Google Drive

[fph il quozientatore]

I also fail to see why this would get any good amount of users even if Google did advertise it correctly - unlike their search engine, gmail and youtube, cloud storage is nothing new. There are tons of companies offering their services with ridiculously low profit margins. Hell, most of them are free for home users, and I really wouldn't trust Google with my company or work data [...] Lastly, but even more so importantly, putting everything for Google to datamine and crawl is just stupid. They

Yeah, and for the same reasons their e-mail service never caught on.

Re:Google Drive

[pushing-robot]

It's probably targeting Apple's iCloud. It's nice to be able to tell developers "Here's a place to store data. It will automatically be backed up and synchronized between the user's devices. You won't have to run your own servers and get the user to trust you with their data. You won't even have to ask the user for special credentials or get them to sign up for Dropbox or anything like that. It just works."

Re:Google Drive

[StevenBielberg]

Gmail was done remarkably better and offered much larger storage than their competitors. Yet, Gmail still didn't win Hotmail or Yahoo which to date are the two largest email providers on planet.

However, it doesn't seem like this is the case with Google Drive. It actually looks like they don't bring anything new or innovative to the table either, and in fact, might have a worse service than Dropbox and other companies have (not even having good software for OS X or Linux). They also don't offer that much more space either.

The cloud storage landscape and internet in 2012 is vastly different from email and Gmail when it launched.

Re:Google Drive

[icebraining]

Lastly, but even more so importantly, putting everything for Google to datamine and crawl is just stupid.

The advantage of a dumb data store is that you can layer some encryption transparently. Even something simple like putting a password on a RAR file is enough to prevent such snooping.

That said, I probably wouldn't use it for anything important anyway.

Re:Google Drive

[Anonymous Coward]

Email is not storage. Users don't want a new email address. That's why hotmail and yahoo still exist at all.

Re:Google Drive

[shutdown -p now]

The attraction of cloud storage for end users is integration with other services - think iCloud. Google already has cloud storage for music, which is pretty neat because you can stream directly from it on any Android device (and optionally precache some files locally, while still having auto-sync etc). They also have a separate cloud storage for photos - PicasaWeb - also integrated with Android gallery, as well as G+. Then there are Google Docs. Perhaps they figured that it's long overdue for them to aggregate all those services together in a single solution, like Apple did with iCloud.

Re:Google Drive

[DragonWriter]

There are two large, very real problems with Google Drive. For starters Google has a long history of abandoning projects after they fail to gain users on them. This would be a huge problem with cloud storage like Google Drive.

Insofar as that is true, that history includes doing so with a long warning before cutting off access and with quite good support for outbound migration, so I don't see why it would be much of a rational concern. Further, the kind of cloud storage user interface being provided is a pretty trivial layer on top of the cloud storage backend that underlies many other Google services that its a pretty low risk of it being discontinued.

I also fail to see why this would get any good amount of users even if Google did advertise it correctly - unlike their search engine, gmail and youtube, cloud storage is nothing new.

Neither web search engines, web-based email, or web-based video hosting were anything new when Google's search engine, Gmail, or YouTube (which wasn't Google's when it was introduced) were introduced. Nevertheless, each managed to do quite well.

Free-to-start, generous quota, and zero-effort (or close to it) signup if you already have a Google Account, by themselves, will get them some users. Actually having some interesting distinguishing features compared to other cloud storage providers would obviously be important to getting substantially more users. The most obvious opportunity I see for Google here is integration with Google Docs.

Lastly, but even more so importantly, putting everything for Google to datamine and crawl is just stupid.

How?

They already know so much - hell, they track Slashdot too.

Tracking slashdot may be evidence of inefficient use of resources, but its hardly an argument in support of "they know too much!" scaremongering.

On top of that Google has serious problem with anti-competition regulators and this is just going to make those issues worse when Dropbox and other companies will demand Google to stop leveraging their search engine against them.

Well, it might cause problems in that regard, if there was evidence that Google was illegally leveraging anything against competitors in the cloud storage space. Then again, as I discuss below, it probably wouldn't even then.

They already have this problem in other markets.

Winning in two different markets to the extent where established players in one feel that its worth their effort to complain that you are leveraging your market position in one to dominate the other is the exact opposite of a "problem" for the firm that is in that position.

It might lead to a problem if you actually were doing something that was likely to produce a signficant restraining action from some government, but as many other firms have demonstrated (notably Microsoft in the software market), even actually illegally leveraging a monopoly in one market to monopolize another rarely results in any remedy that is either timely enough to make any substantial impact on the utility of the action, or significant enough to outweigh the benefits you gain from doing it.

Re:Google Drive

[Missing.Matter]

You must be pretty young to not remember a time when someone might have had to actually delete messages before they received new ones because they ran out of storage in their inbox. We're talking services that offered like 2mb for storage. Then Google came around and offered an entire gigabyte, promising to never have to worry about your inbox capacity again. This absolutely caused many people to switch to gmail. When hotmail and others realized this, they followed suit and started upping their mailbox capacity to match gmail's.

Re:Google Drive

[Missing.Matter]

Gmail offered 1gb of mail storage per user while the competition offered something like 2mb. For Google Drive to be equally impressive, I'd expect them to offer 1.25tb of cloud storage per user. :P

Re:Google Drive

[StevenBielberg]

In fact even Microsoft's offering, SkyDrive, is currently offering 25GB for free. Google is seriously lagging behind in this.

Re:Google Drive

[Charliemopps]

I don't necessarily disagree with your arguments but I'd like to offer arguments to each:

1. Googles target audience is not the corporate user. It's people at home that want to backup photos and such. These people will probobly have a google account, a dropbox account, etc... etc.. The more places you can backup your data the better. If Google drops the product, oh well.

2. I don' think this needs a "Good amount of users" Much like microsoft, Google wants to offer you every option. They don't want to force you to use another companies product simply because they don't offer a "google version" The biggest threat that Google would ever face would be a company offering something they do not, and then that something becoming ubiquitous enough that the rival company could offer the same service that Google does and kill off their business (see facebook)

3. Google, like every other corporation on earth, doesn't give a shit about anti-competition regulation. They can, just like Apple, Microsoft, and everyone else, just ignore it... then, when sued, draw out the court battle so long that the companies in question will die long before any litigation is resolved. Even if they do not, the fines levied are almost always so small they are a joke. If I get a speeding ticket, the fine is about 3 days pay for me. How about when a buisness gets a fine they get a similar fine... 3days gross income. Well, that's another topic.

Re:Google Drive

[demonbug]

I also fail to see why this would get any good amount of users even if Google did advertise it correctly - unlike their search engine, gmail and youtube, cloud storage is nothing new. There are tons of companies offering their services with ridiculously low profit margins. Hell, most of them are free for home users, and I really wouldn't trust Google with my company or work data [...] Lastly, but even more so importantly, putting everything for Google to datamine and crawl is just stupid. They

Yeah, and for the same reasons their e-mail service never caught on.

Speaking of Gmail, currently it says I have 7.7 GB of free storage there. Can't they at least match this with their new Cloud drive? I already use Gmail for temporary storage all the time - just attach files to draft emails and I can access them from anywhere.

Re:Google Drive

[DragonWriter]

You may think that nobody is using it, but it is actually quite widespread service. Of course, Microsoft also offers it for Office and other business users with actual SLA, unlike Google.

Well, Google doesn't offer Google Drive at all yet. I don't know what the basis is for assuming that when they do, they won't offer it to to paid users with an SLA as they already do for similar services (notably including the Cloud Storage API.)

SkyDrive will also be directly integrated into Windows 8, which will most likely bring them millions of users.

Yeah, if only Google had a widely used consumer operating system with which they could bundle Google Drive.

Re:Google Drive

[darkmeridian]

I use TrueCrypt on my Dropbox to make a secure volume that I just drop my stuff into. It's annoying to have to log in and stuff but it's still worth it for the added security.

Re:Google Drive

[CohibaVancouver]

Nobody is using skydrive

I like SkyDrive, but the max file size (50 megs IIRC?) means that for me it's dead in the water. I realize MS is concerned about people using it to trade pirated movies and music, but it also means the service is pretty useless. If I can't even send my parents a video of their granddaughter playing in the park, or singing happy birthday, what's the point?

Re:Google Drive

[elashish14]

Wow, that's really smart of them, imposing a limit on file size to stop piracy. Cause nobody's gonna try splitting their files to get around that limit, nor would they even imagine using encryption to hide the contents of the files.

That is about as useful as DRM. Sucks for the people who use the service legitimately, easily bypassed for those who want to circumvent it anyways.

WebDAV access?

[DdJ]

We'll have to see. If the new "GDrive" can be securely accessed via the open, standard WebDAV protocol, I'll think it's interesting and I'll be an enthusiastic adopter. If not, then it's just another cloud file locker that uses proprietary client software (or a web UI, no good for integration work), which is considerably less interesting.

Re:Privacy?

[Calos]

Dropbox has encryption, but Dropbox has all the keys. If you're worried about your privacy from the party offering the service, you can't give Dropbox a pass.

I think Ars ran an article about a service recently which uses better encryption. Or you can just encrypt your own files before uploading, or use TrueCrypt.

Re:Privacy?

[olsmeister]

Put a TrueCrypt partition on the drive. Encryption needs to be done at the ends; they are just providing a bit storage medium.

5 GB

[Calos]

Only 5 GB? Anyone else a little surprised by that?

My gmail accounts have more space than that, and people have been writing browser extensions and apps for a while to leverage that as cloud storage. 5 GB is at the high end of current free offerings (it matches SugarSync and Box), but by no means revolutionary. You'd think Google, with their resources, would be offering a bit more, especially with their late entry into the game. I guess they can push the tie-ins to other services - like being able to send attachments in Gmail straight to your Google cloud storage. But other than that, what's the incentive, especially if already using another service?

Re:5 GB

[jader3rd]

5 GB is at the high end of current free offerings

SkyDrive is 25 GB and free.

Re:Privacy?

[Calos]

This is that Ars article.

Extremely Thin

[DakotaSmith]

I've got 50GB free at Box and 30GB free on EchoFS.com. Why should I care about 5GB? Just because it's Google?

rsync.net

[thetoadwarrior]

I rather use rsync.net than trust my data to an advertising company.

Re:Privacy?

[Cow Jones]

• If you're looking for privacy, don't store sensitive data in the cloud.
• If you have to, avoid companies which have an obvious interest in your connections, your data, and your profile.
• If you need strong transparent client-side encryption, you can either use a TrueCrypt container (like olsmeister mentioned), or use an alternative provider which offers this feature: for example, SpiderOak or Wuala. Dropbox, as you mentioned is not secure, because they hold your keys.
• Avoid the US and US-based companies for storage of sensitive data. The Patriot Act requires Google to give the DHS access to their servers, even if they are physically located in the EU. Wuala is operated by LaCie, a Swiss company; they guarantee that customer data will always be stored on their servers, which are located in the EU or Switzerland.

I'm not affiliated with either SpiderOak or LaCie, but we've researched possible cloud storage services last month, and settled on Wuala. So far, no problems.

The question is...

[joh]

Will Google have native clients for Windows, Linux, OS X, iOS, Android and Symbian that will offer real file system integration?

Or is that just a web drive you have to up- and download data from?

I'm asking because I'm using Dropbox in a business environment in which I export a Samba share from a Linux server to Dropbox which gets synced to a bunch of clients on half a dozen of very different devices running on Windows, Mac OS, Linux, Android and iOS and all of this works just fine. Having 5 GB instead of 2 GB for free is not much of an advantage if there is no system integration to speak of and exactly this has always been a problem with Google. Hey, they even have a hard time to get IMAP right.

Question before I sign up

[Tokolosh]

Is my data stored in the US?

Does the US government claim to have jurisdiction over my data? (I think I know the answer to this one).

No sync for that 25GB SkyDrive!

[zaimoglu]

Microsoft has got it all wrong with the SkyDrive. Firstly, there are TWO DIFFERENT services: (1) SkyDrive gives you 25GB of free cloud space but WITHOUT synchronization capabilities, so you need to manually keep track of your files, (2) a synchronization service that goes by the name of Live SkyDrive or LiveMesh, with only 5GB space. This second service is the one that can truly be compared to Dropbox. The problems with SkyDrive are not limited to this mind boggling confusion. The 25GB service does not allow you to upload folders. You MUST manually create your folders and only then can you upload your files, though you can select more than one file at this stage. Microsoft really expects you to carefully examine your directory tree and create folders manually!