Slashdot Mirror
The Google Drive App For PC, Mac Is Being Shut Down In March (theverge.com)
Google announced in a blog post today that the Google Drive app for desktop will be shut down. The Verge reports: Support will be cut off on December 11th and the app will shut down completely on March 12th, 2018. Users who are still running the Drive app will start seeing notifications in October that it's "going away," and the company will steer customers towards one of two replacements depending on whether they're a consumer or business user. Google Drive the service isn't going anywhere. You can still access it from the web, smartphone apps, and either of the software options mentioned below. Google now has two fairly new software tools for backing up your data and/or accessing files in the cloud. There's Backup and Sync, the all-encompassing consumer app that replaces both the standalone Google Drive and Google Photos Uploader apps. It offers essentially the same functionality as Drive and works much the same way. And on the enterprise side, Google has rolled out Drive File Streamer, which saves space on your local drive while providing access to "all of your Google Drive files on demand, directly from your computer."
The Drive app is replaced by the "backup and sync" app which does EXACTLY the same thing (plus you can sync directories other than the "Google Drive" one). It has a different icon and name, but it is basically an update, a version 2.0. The functionality is not "going away", if you install the new program is removes and replaces the old one, you don't even need to login again, everything is carried over.
So, what's the problem?
After today's massive Drive outage, anyone who entrusts their important information to these people (or any cloud service, really) has to be brain dead. Mission critical stuff on site. Always.
Android code base would be similar to Linux. It would be great if Linux was still supported while MAC and windows not.
The Google Drive desktop application is utter garbage for collaborative work. Mis-synced files, missing files, mis-versioned files, corrupted files--it was utterly worthless for anything beyond light personal use.
Here's hoping its replacement actually works.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
Why would anyone let Google scan their files once uploaded? You know they are. Your information is valuable.
Better options abound. Google is not a company with which one should do business.
They combine all of that together because Google is hoping you forget to turn off your photo sync settings. Let the biometrics flow....
google is related to money laundry???? and google drive was being used for that??? WOW!!!! hahahhahahahahaha
Sooner or later it will be suddenly EOLed.
I have never seen a company so successful at building amazing products with so many smart people working there manage to completely destroy its traction in markets. Messaging, social networking - its like watching a train wreck in slow motion. Complete failures of leadership.
I work at Amazon. Our engineering teams are good, but clearly not quite at the level of Google. But we ship products that do what customers want and we make money in markets. We don't play silly fricking games with "beta" for two years then scrapping products millions of people use.
Then again, we aren't an advertising company where you aren't the customer, you are the product. Ultimately that attitude will be Google's downfall.
The internet is one big giant data-leak, and you can't clean up the mess.
What a horrible place to store anything valuable/confidential.
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
windows explorer? The one that is basically seamless and works as a file server?
I quite like that, to save my work files on the Google Drive folder and don't worry about backups.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Backup and sync replacing Google Drive is probably fine for home users. It exists, and people can get on with it now.
But I don't use the Google Drive app for personal files. I use it for my company's G Suite set up. For which they are directing people to "Drive File Stream" - an application that doesn't exist yet (there is an early access program, with a number of restrictions).
It's decidedly premature to announce the end of the Google Drive app, when the replacement for business users isn't ready to go.
Only a couple of hundred machines to upgrade remotely over the internet, many of them on internet connections that are barely better than dial up. Thanks Google.
I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either. - Scott Adams
That's a rather strange comment when you look at Google's reputation for closing services whenever they feel like it. Google Drive the service and all their other services are likely to go anywhere. If you want a stable service, don't use Google.
So do we finally get symbolic links now? Or is this "Backup and Sync" uncomplete garbage app like always from Google?
Please don't use the abbreviation "PC" with the implication that the computer is running Microsoft Windows. If you install GNU/Linux on the same computer, it is still a PC.
The term “WC” has been suggested for a computer running Windows.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy...
How exactly did they manage that? I guess it's an EFI module?
just lol
The term “WC” has been suggested for a computer running Windows.
I'm guessing they picked that name because it implies that it's full of the same stuff that you put into the other WC?
(* Hint for Americans: WC stands for water closet.)
I get pissed whenever someone pulls working software from under my feet to replace it with something newer and "better" ( may GNOME3 burn in hell). Give me something static that stays out of my way and not an ever changing mess of "upgrades".
When GNOME 2 was pulled from under my bottom in Ubuntu 11.10 in favor of Un(usabil)ity, I did sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop and never looked back. It's been nearly six years since I switched to Xfce, and it has proven to be comfortably static in the way you describe.
There's no problem, just another's computers somewhere
Without the use of someone else's computer, how else are you supposed to send a file from your computer behind a firewall that blocks incoming connections to a colleague's computer behind a firewall that blocks incoming connections?
Email? FTP site? VPN? All use someone else's computer, unless you spend big bucks to colo your own.
This just in: remote filesystems are not as good as distributed revisions control systems at being a distributed revision control systems. Film at 11.
Google used to offer revision control under the name Google Code. It no longer does. So which service do you recommend for hosting a private distributed revision control repository? Is $108 per year (source) a good deal?
And how well do popular distributed revision control systems handle things other than the relatively small, diff-friendly plain text files that make up computer program source code? Examples include design documents made with LibreOffice or large graphics files made with GIMP.
Same way the "GNU/Linux" stuff was always dead in the water too.
What's a better term to distinguish GNU/Linux, which uses Linux as its kernel, from Android, which also uses Linux as its kernel?
PC is an architecture and even "Macs" are really just "PCs" now (as is XBox and so on).
Macs are personal computers because the person who owns it directs what computing is done on it. This has been the case as long as Xcode has been available. An unmodded retail Xbox, by contrast, is not a personal computer because Microsoft uses code signing to control what code is allowed to run. The same is true of a Windows RT or Windows 10 S device.
I estimate that on over 95 percent of new, fully assembled desktop and laptop PCs sold in retail stores in Google's home country, EFI is bundled with one of two operating systems: macOS on Apple PCs or Windows on other brands.
Right now I can download a file off the web and drop it onto my 'drive'. I can now get to this file from all my pc's, tablets, and phone. Backup and sync seems to be just for one machine and separates the machines. So I think we have lost the sharing functionality Any thoughts?