Google Drive Goes Live

lemmen writes "As widely expected, Google Drive has launched officially today. Google Drive is free for the first 5GB, while you can get an upgrade to 25GB for $2.50 a month. They say the service is available for PCs, Macs, Android devices, and soon iOS devices. According to Mercury News, '... the success of Drive will ride largely on whether Google can differentiate its offering from already established fast-growing cloud storage startups that were in the market first, such as Dropbox and Box, as well as Microsoft's SkyDrive service and big consumer media competitors like Apple's iCloud and Amazon's Cloud Drive. ... Existing Google Docs files, the centerpiece of Google's existing cloud storage offering, will move to the Google Drive service once users download apps and install the new service."

Comments

Forget this garbage

[Anonymous Coward]

Access requires a proprietary client.

Where are open, standard protocols which don't require unvetted Google software to be trusted with power over our computers?

Re:Forget this garbage

[schitso]

You mean like the ones used by Dropbox, SugarSync, and Box?

Oh wait...

Re:Forget this garbage

[The MAZZTer]

Don't forget SkyDrive. Even MS, who knows Windows inside and out, install a special client and just sync files back and forth like everyone else does.

Re:Forget this garbage

[yog]

It's free, and it's Google. I would trust Google to be around for a while, to charge decent prices and provide useful tools to access the drive, and also I believe them when they say no human will see my stuff. Some other companies, such as Facebook, I don't trust nearly as much, because they seem to lack Google's commitment to be a trustworthy arbitrator of data.

Re:Forget this garbage

[WrongSizeGlass]

They all seem to include drive, box or cloud. Which one will be next? DriveBoxCloud? BoxCloudDrive? CloudDriveBox?

Re:Forget this garbage

[gstoddart]

and also I believe them when they say no human will see my stuff

I'm increasingly unsure of that. We know they scrape the contents of your emails to decide what ads to show you. We know they keep track of your browsing history as much as they can, and aggregate it across sites.

I'm just not convinced they wouldn't be peeking inside.

Then again, the only stuff I'm going to keep in the cloud is just temporary personal with no real need to have a whole lot of privacy. Anything work related, I simply won't put it into the cloud -- because for anything business confidential, I don't trust the cloud providers at all. And, more importantly, neither does my employer.

Re:Forget this garbage

[tgd]

Don't forget SkyDrive. Even MS, who knows Windows inside and out, install a special client and just sync files back and forth like everyone else does.

If you were to use a virtual filesystem driver or a filesystem filter and stream it directly, you need admin rights to install and you have a very different security profile (because the driver would need to be able to sync from multiple Live accounts across all the profiles on the workstation).

Is it possible to do direct streaming/caching as a mounted drive/directory? Absolutely. I wrote one a few years ago that would attach a WebDAV share onto the system. That's basically how all the various app streaming products work. But its a lousy model for a light-weight consumer system.

Re:Forget this garbage

[Anonymous Coward]

Even MS

"Even MS", as in "even MS are using a proprietary client and a non-standardized protocol"? o_O

Re:Forget this garbage

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

The problem goes deeper than that: Unless you go with encryption-on-client(ideally handled by a dedicated security processor, so that the key is never available to the potentially untrustworthy uploader-agent), which is comparatively rare because it breaks handy features like 'access from the web' and deduplication, the cloud storage provider gets to paw through your files by design.

Now, I do have to wonder why Google used a proprietary client(given their history of, for instance, OSSing their updater widget in order to calm people's fears about what it might be up to) when your data will be showing up on their servers in short order anyway, and file transfer over the internet isn't exactly an area of cutting-edge research.(Hi rysnc, how's it going?). One would think that an OSSed client would provide minimal competitive advantage to others, while helping to alleviate the 'our google overlords creep me out' response.

More generally, though, there really isn't a 'clientless'(ie. client is installed by default) option at present. The browser-based upload widgets are hacky as hell and often flake out on larger files, the java/activeX ones are incrementally more reliable but far more demanding and dodgy. FTP is horribly insecure and crotchety, SFTP causes barely a ripple outside a few geek circles. WebDAV seems to have gone nowhere for something like two decades now, some sort of NFS/SMB over VPN is ugly and wouldn't play nicely with many setups... A FUSE based FS would be nice for team linux; but arguably counts as a 'client' and doesn't help the majority of the market much...

I'd certainly trust an OSS client over a closed one; but it's hard to hold the need for a client of some kind against them at the moment.

Re:Forget this garbage

[Reapman]

Actually that's all pretty much wrong.. it supports a lot more then Google Docs formated files - in fact even shows thumbnails apparently of a lot of standard file types when browsing. Integration seems to be it's sweet spot.

Don't need an Apps account - works fine on regular users (although it seems to be a phased rollout - it told me that my (Canadian) account will be enabled soon.

Re:Forget this garbage

[gstoddart]

You do know what a scraper is, right? It's a script. An automated script. One that no human generally deals with (unless it's broken).

As a matter of fact, I do. But oddly enough, yesterday's Dilbert cartoon is apropos.

If something is scraping it, it is available to be read by humans.

Now, if they tell us that under no circumstances will any entity ever peek into my data then I'd believe it to be secure. Well, even then, I'm not sure I'd "believe" that.

Otherwise, it's being opened and read and cataloged and indexed. I don't care if it's a scraper, or an intern at that point. You may see a magical difference between those, but I don't.

Re:Forget this garbage

[suomynonAyletamitlU]

"Cloud, cloud, drive, spam, box, spam, and drive. It hasn't got much spam in it..."

I was going for a monty python reference, but I'm sure enterprising netizens will find a way to put the other kind of spam on there, too.

Re:Forget this garbage

[Marillion]

Until someone writes an FOSS tool based upon https://developers.google.com/drive/v1/reference/ The really ambitious ones could write a FUSE layer on top of it.

Re:Forget this garbage

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Ah, thanks for the negative mod, there. Fine, I'll go into more detail: Google didn't just make a client, they're providing the storage, connection, maintenance, etc. It's also for business purposes, not a charity. Of course they want control over the client. If you're going to demand otherwise, you might as well just hold up a sign saying "I want the word Insightful to appear next to my post!"

Re:Forget this garbage

[hendridm]

Actually that's all pretty much wrong.. it supports a lot more then Google Docs formated files - in fact even shows thumbnails apparently of a lot of standard file types when browsing. Integration seems to be it's sweet spot.

I go to drive.google.com with my regular, non-Apps gmail login, and it says something like:
"Google Docs is currently not available." ...and there's a "Notify Me" button for when it's available. (I am in the U.S.)

Don't need an Apps account - works fine on regular users

I go to drive.google.com with my Apps account, and it says:
"Google Drive is not yet enabled for the My Company Name domain."

So I go to my Apps admin account and enable it in the "Drive and Docs" admin area, which AFAICT, is the only place in the admin menus where it's referenced. I go to the Drive section and make sure both check boxes are checked.

I go to Google Docs, and whoopedy-doooo, I can save Docs files online (which I thought I could do before)! Fun!

Re:Forget this garbage

[Richard_at_work]

Microsoft would be sued from here to the moon and back if they included this sort of sync within Windows, bound to their servers.

Oh, and also ripped to shit on here.

Re:Forget this garbage

[bkaul01]

True, though it has long been possible with SkyDrive in Windows to simply map a network drive (open a SkyDrive file in Office on your computer, then choose save-as to get the URL for the file share) and use offline files to sync. Essentially that's all the new client does, just without any manual hacking required.

Re:Forget this garbage

[shadowrat]

I think the OP had a legitimate gripe. Not everyone wants to run a local executable from a company that has demonstrated a lot of interest in prying into your privacy. Granted, if you are choosing to store your files on drive, you must have some trust in them. However, what guarantee do the paranoid have that the drive client will not just be silently uploading everything you have to google. I'm not sure it's even hyperbole to suggest a point in the future where the drive client might say, "good news! you can now store everything you have on Drive! To make it easy for you, we've already uploaded all your data!"

Google could easily have provided a client built upon an open api and won a lot of favor.

Re:Forget this garbage

[Fwipp]

There's a nice RESTful SDK that looks pretty promising. Nothing stopping you from using it to make whatever front-end client you want. In fact, I'd bet that the official Google client is using it.

Re:Forget this garbage

[DamonHD]

...which simply wouldn't be legal under EU Data Protection rules. Bait-and-switch doesn't trump privacy.

Unless you're called Facebook I suppose, but didn't Facebook just have to sign a 20 year agreement with the US FTC promising NOT to do things like that again?

Rgds

Damon

Re:Forget this garbage

[badpazzword]

That's precisely what they're planning to do.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/02/20/connecting-your-apps_2c00_-files_2c00_-pcs-and-devices-to-the-cloud-with-skydrive-and-windows-8.aspx

Re:Forget this garbage

[Z8]

You could use a client-side program with encryption that's designed to work with untrusted servers. A simple OSS example is duplicity; it supports backends like WebDAV and Amazon S3.

Re:Forget this garbage

[AngryDeuce]

Not everyone wants to run a local executable from a company that has demonstrated a lot of interest in prying into your privacy

Not everyone is planning on using it for shit that actually matters. For me, it's nothing but a virtual flash drive to share media without carrying a physical one around (and probably lose/forget somewhere). 5 GBs is more than enough to share photos, music, and video clips.

I totally get the privacy concerns people have, but let's not pretend that every fucking piece of data people generate has some use to Google. If they want to scrape my cookie recipes looking for something to monetize, I couldn't give less of a shit.

I guess it's just not the sort of thing I can understand being worked up over. If someone is worried Google might look at their shit, they shouldn't upload their shit to Google Drive. If they don't want it on their computer, they don't have to install it. There are plenty of paid options out there that treat your cloud storage like a bank vault. Go with one of them.

Re:Forget this garbage

[shutdown -p now]

SkyDrive is actually WebDAV, it's just not really advertized as such. But you can see it when you enable SkyDrive integration in MS Office and look at the file paths in file open/save dialogs.

Anyway, if you want a cloud disk service with open, documented protocol and the ability to mount it as a regular disk drive in pretty much any OS, that would be Jungle Disk (they even have a FUSE provider!).

Re:Forget this garbage

[squiggleslash]

Summary of article: Employee breaks Google's rules about confidentiality, is fired.

I'm sorry, but how does that article do anything other than encourage trust in Google?

Re:Forget this garbage

[toolo]

http://www.groovypost.com/howto/microsoft/windows-7-map-drive-skydrive-using-url-address-network/

Map as a drive. No client needed. Done.

Re:Forget this garbage

[cerberusss]

I'd go for shit. Where did I leave my shit? Oh fuck, I left it in the cloud. ShitCloud (TM).

Or dump. I'ma dumpin' my shit in the cloud.

Good backup for important files

[cpu6502]

My resume, my tax returns, purchased books..... just in case the house burns down & eats my USB backup drive.

Re:Good backup for important files

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget to encrypt all this before sending it to "the cloud"

Re:Good backup for important files

[thetoadwarrior]

Which is why I rather back it up on something more secure like rsync.net and not give it to someone who wants to scan all my data in order to help themselves target me better with advertising.

Re:Good backup for important files

[A nonymous Coward]

Make sure that safe is fire safe for electronics. Most fire safes brag about keeping the interior to 350F or so for a few hours. Solder flows just above that, so electronics aren't good in them. But some safes are better; you just have to be careful.

Re:Good backup for important files

[gid]

Yeah, but a hacker in Russia isn't going to drive all the way house in Ohio just to steal a couple ssn's and couple hundered gigs worth of family photos and movies. Not mention storing all my data in the cloud would be quite expensive.

Re:Good backup for important files

[A nonymous Coward]

I have a Hall's safe (before they ughed out their web page with animation and moved the company) but they were local. The main thing is to look for the temperature rating of the inside, not the fire. I haven't looked for one in a while and have no other recommendation.

Re:Good backup for important files

[swillden]

Don't forget to encrypt all this before sending it to "the cloud"

There is a cost to doing that: Google Drive's search features won't work for you. I have thousands of files in mine (I work for Google and have been using it for a few months, with a very generous storage limit, so I've got lots in there), and although you can organize things in hierarchical directories, the search features are the way I find the stuff I want 99% of the time. What makes it really nice is that it indexes everything -- it can parse virtually any file format, and even uses the Google Goggles technology to extract textual descriptions of objects in images, and I think it also does OCR on images as well.

Of course, if you're more worried about Google extracting information from your files than about your ability to find them, then this aggressive search indexing is stronger motivation to encrypt. If you just want to be able to find your stuff easily, from anywhere, it rocks, and encrypting will break it.

Re:Good backup for important files

[LateArthurDent]

There is a cost to doing that: Google Drive's search features won't work for you...and although you can organize things in hierarchical directories, the search features are the way I find the stuff I want 99% of the time.

I've been seeing both Windows and Mac moving in the direction of trying to abstract me from the location where files are saved in favor of searching for them. I've never understood that use model. I don't mind that other people would find their files that way, but I've never had to search for a file in my life. I just save them in logical places and they're always where I expect them to be. It's most certainly not what I want to do 99% of the time.

It must be a result of working with a computer back when indexing every single file in your box would have been an insane waste of storage space, the indexing process would have taken an insane amount of time during which my computer would have been unusable because I'd only have a single core, and the search through the index would still be slow enough that it'd be faster to navigate to the file. In those days, we wore an onion in our belts, because that was the style at the time...

Re:Good backup for important files

[LateArthurDent]

I suspect I started using computers about as early as you did (first experience was in the late 70s, got my first computer in the early 80s, first IBM PC was in 86, first computer I bought myself was in 91, etc.) and I've always felt the same way about organization, but on both my Mac and with Google Drive I find that searching is just faster than navigating, even if I know exactly where my file is.

That's fair enough, and like I said, I don't have a problem with people who want to do that. In fact, since Google Drive is actually still allowing me to set the hierarchy, I think Google is handling it right. I just have this fear that one day operating systems will be like phone operating systems. They'll stop telling me where my stuff is, and no longer allow me to exert any control over it.

For one single file, I will even agree that searching is faster than navigating. However, typically when I navigate to the directory where I keep a file, I have several related files right there, that I will soon be working with as well. Now I don't need to also search for them, because the folder is open on the right spot.

Basically, I didn't mean to be critical of your workflow, I just wanted to point out that there are people like me who don't use the search features as the default method of getting to our data. Literally the only times I will ever search for a file is if it wasn't placed there by me. For example, when it was placed by the installer of an application.

Mixed bag compared to Dropbox

[Richard_at_work]

Versions count against your storage, trash counts against your storage, Google Docs files do not, shared files do not.

No right-click menu in the desktop client, so no grabbing public links etc.

No ability to name the Google Drive folder, only choose its location (the same as dropbox, but a lot of people were hoping for "pick any folder anywhere").

Speed is a bit faster.

Storage prices a lot cheaper ($9.99/month for 200GB vs $9.99 for 50GB on Dropbox).

There is offline access to Google Docs stuff, not tried that yet.

The Windows client is very very very similar to an old Dropbox version - even down to "Selective Sync" within the Google Drive folder.

Android and iOS apps - no Blackberry app yet.

All in all, I haven't come to a conclusion yet - better in some aspects, worse in others. I think a lot of people were expecting a lot more from Google Drive than this offering.

Re:Mixed bag compared to Dropbox

[yog]

Perhaps when viewed in isolation, Drive is not that much better than DropBox, but when you add in other Google services such as music.google.com, Google wins. I have 60 gigs of music stored on music.google.com, at zero cost, and I think I can upload about 9,000 more files before I hit the free limit.

Google Picasa allows unlimited storage for images of up to 2048 x 2048 pixels and videos up to 15 minutes. I've only put a few things on Picasa as yet, but I suspect that almost all of my 254 gigs of images and video clips will qualify as free storage at Picasa.

And, of course, as you point out, Google Docs files don't count toward storage, so if you allow them to convert your Word/OO/Libre files over to Docs format, you're all set.

I suspect that for a lot of people, the free 5 gigs in combination with Google's Music and Picasa services will just about cover everything.

Re:Mixed bag compared to Dropbox

[metrometro]

> I think a lot of people were expecting a lot more from Google Drive than this offering.

The reason DropBox won over the existing services (there were many) was simplicity. It's a folder that syncs. That's all people want. More features, more complexity: Microsoft has tried it. Dropbox ate their lunch.

Google is offering a folder that syncs, at a lower price on an ID management platform many people already use. Seems likely to work.

Re:Mixed bag compared to Dropbox

[DdJ]

I did. It's not.

(Unless you're using Google Chrome and have offline access to Google Docs set up, and had connected to it before syncing the file you want to look at, that is. Because in that case, it was already syncing down without the Google Docs sync client. But only read-only, not for editing.)

So: you try it, with your default browser set to anything other than Chrome. Or: quit Chrome, go to another computer, create a new Google Docs file, let the sync client pull it over, kill your internet connection, and then double-click on the synced file.

Go ahead, try it. If your results differ from mine, we can try to figure out why.

Not for "Google Apps for your domain" users.

[Simulant]

Yet again.

Re:Not for "Google Apps for your domain" users.

[robmv]

Wrong, I have it and it works (at least the Android client and web interface, I don't use Windows or Mac), enable doc in the control panel or request it to the domain admin, it is the same Google Docs permission

Re:Not for "Google Apps for your domain" users.

[robmv]

Do you have set in the domain settings "New User Features" = "Rapid Release"?. I have "Rapid Release", probably this is the reason your domain is waiting that we beta test it

Google:Let us know everything else about you

[Picass0]

Yes, I want to upload my financial information, work history, scans of legal documents, and anything else personal from my hard drive and have it spidered by Google. I'm sure they can be trusted. They've been so respectful so far of people's privacy.

Re:Google:Let us know everything else about you

[readandburn]

Wouldn't you encrypt your files before uploading them? I would.

Re:Google:Let us know everything else about you

[coinreturn]

Google's in bed with the NSA. They can decrypt your files, no problem.

Re:Google:Let us know everything else about you

[swillden]

I would expect people posting on /. to understand that you don't upload anything to Google that you don't want the world to see.

IMO, that's too strong.

I would not suggest uploading stuff that would incriminate you, because Google does respond to subpoenas. They have to. But as for other information which you don't want people to see... Google isn't going to publish your documents, or mine them for company confidential information -- though I wouldn't upload company confidential information to any service your employer hasn't specifically authorized (Note that Google Docs has been vetted by the US government and can be used for non-classified government information). Also, Google takes security seriously and is very unlikely to be hacked (yes, there was the Chinese hack reported a while back. Keep in mind that Google was one of hundreds of companies attacked, and Google was the only one to notice it and publish the information, and AFAIK, no user data was revealed. My understanding is that the hackers got into the corporate network, not the production network where user data lives).

Of course, you should do what you feel comfortable with, but tens if not hundreds of millions of people will put sensitive data in their Google Drive, just as hundreds of millions send sensitive information through Gmail, or perform web searches for sensitive topics, etc. Nearly all of Google's products are used to access or store information which could be important to users. How many cases of users being burned by that have you seen? Google is very careful with user data.

All of that said, I do encrypt my most sensitive data before putting it in Drive.

Re:No thanks.

[dyingtolive]

I will still be able to sleep at night knowing that evil Google has my collection of Warhammer 40k army lists and Dungeons and Dragons character backstories.

If we all do this, maybe then Games Workshop will realize that there's more to 40k than Space Marines and Hasbro will finally get the hint that we all hated 4th edition and think Drizzt can suck the business end of a crossbow.

Just to clarify: I like my privacy, but I understand when my privacy stops being just that; Anything I do not wish to become public I do not make as such.

Porn?

[BenoitRen]

Does this allow the storage of porn? :)

Re:Porn?

[who_stole_my_kidneys]

you only have 5GB of porn? damn, guess im perverted one :-P

Re:Porn?

[TubeSteak]

you only have 5GB of porn? damn, guess im perverted one :-P

He probably has the exact same number of files as you, but all the videos have been downconverted to postage stamp sized real media files.
I mean, haven't you ever looked at a girl and wished she was slightly more... pixelated?

They are too lazy to check browser language prefs

[weeble]

Google as ever uses reverse IP lookup rather than browser preferences to set the language (language preferences only work once you log in and often even not when logged in). They assume people do not travel and everyone within a particular geographical area will only speak the dominant language.

Re:SkyDrive + Dropbox = Even better

[Ralph Spoilsport]

I agree - for once MS did something almost right. 25GB for free is excellent. Personally I would like 1TB for free, but that'll come later...

Re:SkyDrive + Dropbox = Even better

[WolfgangPG]

This is all out of date as of yesterday. Max file size sync has changed, etc... Please keep up!

Skydrive offers 7GB for Free, Google Drive offers 5GB. Sky Drive offers a max of 100GB of Paid Storage, Google Drive offers 16TB of paid storage.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/04/23/the-next-chapter-for-skydrive-personal-cloud-storage-for-windows-available-anywhere.aspx
https://apps.live.com/skydrive

They need to update their Google compare: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/skydrive/compare
Make sure you keep up with the news :)

Re:SkyDrive + Dropbox = Even better

[WolfgangPG]

Android App for SkyDrive: https://apps.live.com/skydrive/app/4c12c1cf-063a-4440-a75b-1fe1ea0b9df5

Re:The most important question

[Pausanias]

No. Only Dropbox supports linux, and does it extremely well (though still proprietary).

Dropbox is the first internet company I've been excited about since Google back in 1998. They are run by a bunch of geeks, like Google used to be (MIT though, east coast style leadership vs. west coast/Stanford). Their syncing solution is elegant and just works. The day I tried Dropbox was they day my opinion of "the cloud" changed from a load of bull to actually something worthy of serious attention.

Re:SkyDrive + Dropbox = Even better

[tgd]

SkyDrive offers 25GB (max size per file is 100MB) for free. This allows almost all of my files to be stored on the SkyDrive. All of the large files and sensitive documents go in my TC container and synced with Dropbox, which, with all the incentives, is up to 3GB of free space.

What I really wish i could find would be a program that would split a truecrypt container into multiple files of a set size. Then the whole thing would fit on the SkyDrive.

I believe the update to SkyDrive that went live this week now allows 2GB files. And still appears to work via WebDAV, plus has an offline mode.

Re:Huge price hike

[eyrieowl]

Of course you can, but c'mon, it's a vastly different model than simply sharing a link directly to a 5GB file. As a practical matter, you're probably unlikely to want to spend the time chunking up 5GB into 10-20MB attachments and then uploading them individually to separate emails to send out...and your 1000 recipients wouldn't thank you either.

Re:Huge price hike

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

If I remember, this is also why Google made some quiet, but threatening, noises about what they would do to anybody who made serious use of the cute little 'gmailFS' FUSE projects that are available to slap a filesystem-like structure on top of your Gmail storage space.

It isn't rocket-surgery that Gmail quotas are often largely underused, and the stuff that is used is rich with delicious keywords to be mined any monetized, while bulk file storage brings out the packrat in people, and frequently ends up containing big huge lumps of 'boring-and-probably-pirated-.iso-I-might-need-again' which aren't worth much to the marketdroids...

Re:The most important question

[MickyTheIdiot]

SpiderOak, though a slightly different syncing style, also works on Linux natively. Quite nicely, too.

No linux client

[A nonymous Coward]

Dropbox has one, Google Drive doesn't. That's a killer for me.

Specifics?

[DragonWriter]

It appears to only work with Google Docs

This is true in the sense that Google Docs could already store any kind of file and what Google did with drive was:
1. Rename Google Docs to "Drive"
2. Expand the free storage quota
3. Provide desktop and mobile apps and SDK

Its false in the sense that you can store files that Google Docs can't edit (and, you can use the web interface to edit files that Docs can't edit itself, since the Drive SDK allows Drive apps installed through the Chrome Web Store to register associations with file types so that "open with [app]" is available from the Drive UI (and the user can chose to set an app as the default editor for a particular file type, as well.)

I tried signing up with my regular gmail account and it wouldn't let me.

I had no problem logging in with my non-apps account. In fact, if I'm logged in and navigate to docs.google.com, I actually get the Drive web UI (which is virtually identical to what the Docs UI was before Drive was introduced.)

Plus, I thought you could store your Docs files online before?

Google Docs included both a number of file editor applications and universal (any file) cloud storage. Drive is basically an enhancement to the cloud storage part (which is now renamed) to expand the free quota, provide desktop apps which provide desktop integration, providing an SDK, etc,

I don't see how it's different, except being much less useful than its competitors.

How is it "much less useful than its competitors"?

Re:Specifics?

[DragonWriter]

I don't have to use Google Docs with Dropbox.

You don't have to use the "Google Docs" (even if, by that, you mean the Google Drive web UI which used to be the Google Docs file list web UI) with Drive either.

I can just drag and drop files to the share in Finder.

And you can drag-and-drop files to Google Drive when you have the MacOS or Windows desktop app installed, too.

I don't want to use Google Docs!

I'm not sure what you mean by "Google Docs" here.

If you mean "the cloud storage space for any kind of file that used to be part of Google Docs", well, since that's what Drive's storage is, that's kind of a deal breaker (if a circular argument) with Drive.

If you mean "the Google Drive web UI, which used to be the Google Docs file list web UI", you don't have to use those with Drive, though it is available.

If you mean "the various Google editors for documents, spreadsheets, drawings, and presentation that were and still are called 'Google Docs'", you don't have to use those with Drive either, though they are available (and the SDK allows third-party web apps to supplement them for creating or editing files online, and even to replace them as the default editors for various file types.)

Re:Specifics?

[DragonWriter]

If you mean "the various Google editors for documents, spreadsheets, drawings, and presentation that were and still are called 'Google Docs'", you don't have to use those with Drive either, though they are available (and the SDK allows third-party web apps to supplement them for creating or editing files online, and even to replace them as the default editors for various file types.)

I thought that's what Google Docs is.

Now that the rest of what was Google Docs before today has been renamed "Drive", that is what Google Docs is. The cloud storage and web-based file list UI that are now part of what is called "Google Drive" used to also be part of "Google Docs". You can use the Drive part without using the Docs part (essentially, the Docs part is a set of apps that handle create/open actions from within Drive, and which can now be supplemented with third-party apps that can do the same thing.)

Regardless, how do I use it outside of the above definition?

1. The same way you could use the cloud storage part of Google Docs without using the online editors part that is still "Google Docs" before the cloud storage was renamed Drive -- upload via the Drive (ex-Docs) web UI, share via the Drive web UI, and download via the Drive web UI. None of that requires the online editors.

2. Using the new desktop applications, which provide a synchronized local copy of the files stored in your Drive (ex-Docs) cloud storage.

3. Using third party web apps installed through the Chrome Web Store using the new Drive SDK which can manipulate files stored in your drive cloud storage, including the ability to handle create/open actions initiated through the web UI.

Linky? drive.google.com isn't terribly helpful, unless I'm missing something.

CNETs How to get started with Google Drive
Google Drive SDK docs

Some questions

[edmicman]

After reading a few articles, here's what I still want to know:

If you want to pay for the service, can you opt for a year-long contract or something? It seems like a reasonable price, but I'd rather not have yet another monthly charge.

How does the space work compared with whatever allocated space your other Google services have? Right now I've got some amount of Gmail space, some amount of Picasa space, unlimited (?) Google+ space for images and videos (which still show up in Picasa web but don't apply to the quota?), and then the Google Docs space. Will there be any consolidation of this? Do I want there to be?

Will we be able to use the GDrive app on my phone to store something like a keepass password file (encrypted) and access it from multiple devices? I can do that with Dropbox right now.

Re:Some questions

[whoop]

Google has a little breakdown of the old-vs-new plans. They say the purchased storage is shared with everything, but my Gmail says I have 208, so they add the default 8GB to it.

Re:The most important question

[bored_engineer]

. . .though still proprietary

Nope. The Linux Dropbox client in licensed under the GPL. Zmanda, rsync.net, jungledisk and spideroak are other services that also work with linux.

Re:SkyDrive + Dropbox = Even better

[PCM2]

Free accounts can only upgrade to 25GB for a limited time, provided they have a few files on SkyDrive already. New users will only get 7GB for free.

Google drive with True Crypt?

[cayenne8]

I'm wondering if there is a way to easily set up TrueCrypt for the google disk...across multiple machines?

Thinking that would be a convenient way to use the 'free' space, yet keep it from Google's prying eyes....

Re:Google drive with True Crypt?

[Binestar]

Convenient and encryption doesn't seem to go well together. The closest I have found for windows and these cloud devices is AxCrypt, which lets you encrypt and password protect each individual file you store.

Re:Google drive with True Crypt?

[Anonymous Coward]

Try BoxCryptor. http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/encrypt-dropbox-files-boxcryptor/. Install it on each machine. It creates a Drive that acts as a front end to the cloud drive and encrypts/decrypts on the fly. I saw it here a couple of weeks ago for some other article. I would post on my other account, but I am modding too. I want to help, but not strip the modded posts. :)

SkyDrive REST apis

[Anonymous Coward]

SkyDrive has a bunch of REST apis you can use that don't require installing any client software: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/live/hh243648.aspx

Re:SkyDrive REST apis

[DragonWriter]

SkyDrive has a bunch of REST apis you can use that don't require installing any client software: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/live/hh243648.aspx

So does Google Drive. https://developers.google.com/drive/v1/reference/

UDP file transfer?

[TheSync]

Do any of the cloud storage services come with a UDP file transfer system?

Trying to move video files with TCP is silly.

Re:UDP file transfer?

[jschottm]

Trying to move video files with TCP is silly.

No, TCP is the protocol to use if you're moving video because you want to do an accurate transmission of the data and adding error checking to UDP is silly when there's a protocol that does it out of the box.

If you're talking on-demand playback, you might have a point, but the majority of the users out there have UDP port filtered and possibly firewalled and it's easier to just send data to TCP port 80 than deal with firewall issues.

Messed up the pricing

[Seb C.]

Just bought 20Gb extra storage (mainly for picasaweb) a month ago. Payed 5 bucks a year for 20Gb.
Now for 25Gb, i would have to pay 2,5 bucks a month.
The pricing went for about 6 times the previous pricing plans. That's very disappointing.
I won't go for google new pricing plans. If i ever need more, i'd rather pay for smugmug or something for my pictures, and may be keep my old good plan for google drive, until they kick me out..
Honestly, google, why do you want me to pay that much for synced data (means that those data are duplicated -and thus backed up- around my computers) ?

I think they really missed the point. (and increasing pricing to that level is just non-sense to me).

Re:The most important question

[sanvila]

I see dropbox still tries to mislead people into thinking their client is Free (and according to you, succeeds in it). Their website weasels around the subject but the truth is that only the small piece that integrates with the file manager is open source and the actual client is not.

Exactly. This is from the nautilus-dropbox Debian package available in non-free:

Installing this package will download the proprietary dropbox binary from dropbox.com.

That's far from being free software, unfortunately.

Re:What are the prospects for a 3rd-party FUSE cli

[DragonWriter]

Does anyone know if there's something in the Google Drive API that forbids (or tries to forbid) usage by anything other than an Officially Approved® Google Client?

Not really. The closest thing is that apps have no access to a user's Google Drive unless the user has installed the app through the Chrome Web Store. And given the way Google uses OAuth, if you want to have an app that access the Drive API without an immediate web interface that the user is logged into, you'll need them to approve (via the web) a special "offline" token for your app, as well as installing it through the Chrome Web Store. But there doesn't seem anything that prevents a third-party desktop app so long as it jumps through the right hoops.

Or do you think it's likely that Google will eventually provide their own FUSE client for Google Drive (like they did for Google Docs with "google-docs-fs")?

AFAIK, google-docs-fs was not provided by Google, it was provided by a third-party developer who happened to host the project on Google Code.

Drive IS the new Docs

[DragonWriter]

I trust Google to be around for a while, but not necessarily any of their services beyond Search, Gmail, Youtube, and (to a smaller extent) Docs.

Well, that seems to cover the immediate issue, since "Drive" is just a new name for the heart of Docs (what used to be the Docs web UI is now called "Drive" and looks pretty much exactly the same except for the branding, the Drive web UI is the place on the web where you access the files that used to be part of Docs, and where you invoke web applications to create or edit them -- including the Docs apps, though with the rename also came a new SDK which allows third-party apps to be installed and be invoked through the same UI.)