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Disable Google Drive drive letter

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Re: Disable Google Drive drive letter

#41

Post by paisawalla »

ljm wrote: post #26
robbedpeter wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's lazy and greedy and arrogant. It's catering to the lowest common denominator, pushing users into a cycle of manipulation and constant change, preventing any nuanced use of software, forcing users to increased dependence on a walled garden. It's a dark pattern - don't let people use the software in unexpected ways that might take potential profit away from another service or future feature. If any use gives more…

Going with Occam's Razor, I think it's really just as simple as product/engineering not making this kind of feature a priority. Plus, we're talking about Google here, so this new desktop version was 99% likely to have been rebuilt as an MVP.

I think Occam's Razor, when it comes to Google's enterprise tools, suggests that nobody who is important to Google has complained about this. The understanding being that you can't get your voice heard unless you're a customer with 10,000+ seats.

Re: Disable Google Drive drive letter

#42

Post by xg15 »

Wild guess... but this sounds like the drive letter isn't really a feature but actually an implementation detail leaking through that they are trying to dress up as a feature. At least that would explain their insistence on users hiding the drive instead of removing it.

I believe, previously they just had a daemon running on the client PC that synced a local folder with the cloud storage. (Like Dropbox)

Now they seem to have switched to some sort of "fuse-but-on-windows" virtual device driver that accesses the cloud storage directly and presents it locally as a virtual drive. (Like OneDrive)

Would this make sense?

Re: Disable Google Drive drive letter

#43

Post by b112 »

Gigachad wrote: post #4
grenoire wrote: post #2

Guys... honest question. What happened to settings menus? Why are we taking away configuration from users' hands?

Configuration adds complexity and is a huge source of confusion for users. Google drive strikes me as something that should just work and be so simple that you do not have to configure it. There does not seem to be any genuine reason to make this change a setting because the main objection is just "I don't like it" rather than "it stops me from doing x" or "it makes x harder" It would be much less painful to just hav…

Configuration adds complexity and is a huge source of confusion for users

This is overstated, and blown out of proportion these days.

Many of the studies stating so are 30 years old, at a time when virtually everyone was new to computing.

As well, an "advanced" menu item makes it simplisticly clear, don't monkey here novice, even an option for 'expert'.

And these can all be hidden away, so the novice / confused cannot find them easily, such as a pref "show advanced option".

This had worked well for decades. No confusion.

The real reason this "confusion" narrative exists, is options cost money, time. It fits the preference of less work.

Re: Disable Google Drive drive letter

#44

Post by b112 »

danielheath wrote: post #23
Gigachad wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Configuration adds complexity and is a huge source of confusion for users. Google drive strikes me as something that should just work and be so simple that you do not have to configure it. There does not seem to be any genuine reason to make this change a setting because the main objection is just "I don't like it" rather than "it stops me from doing x" or "it makes x harder" It would be much less painful to just hav…

> It would be much less painful to just have users get used to the new behavior than to support a setting for forever. Painful for who?

Users are the product...

Do you care what gold thinks, as you mine it?

No, you only care about raw cost. And if you lose some gold, but in the end save money, who cares?

Which makes one wonder, should OSS vs profit driven, think of such things the same way?

Re: Disable Google Drive drive letter

#45

Post by noahadavis »

izacus wrote: post #30
grenoire wrote: post #2

Guys... honest question. What happened to settings menus? Why are we taking away configuration from users' hands?

It's just... easier for engineers. Less to test, less code, less to think about. And right now, all software is being built at the pleasure of the software engineers - this is why you're also seeing shift towards things like Electron apps and less options and worse UX. It's just easier for the guy programming it and noone really cares about user experience because there's no real competition. I mean, what are you goi…

> I mean, what are you going to do, use a 3rd party client for Google's services? You're not allowed to - at least not on the same service level.

3rd party Google Drive clients have been the only type of Google Drive client on Linux for a long time.

Probably the only good graphical client is this one and it's actually pretty good: https://www.insynchq.com/

Re: Disable Google Drive drive letter

#46

Post by deepsun »

sumedh wrote: post #37
pedro2 wrote: post #14

Google Backup & Sync is being replaced by Google Drive for Desktop, née Google [Drive] File Stream. Unlike Dropbox, where filenames are searchable by name on Everything, here that doesn't seem to happen -- at least the indexing takes more than 15 minutes with UI frozen. An interesting tidbit: Google Filestream allows mounting on a folder. Google Drive for Desktop doesn't support it yet. Another interesting tidbit: th…

> Google Backup & Sync is being replaced by Google Drive for Desktop Why does Google have this bad habit of changing product names, they do it with Chat as well.

Promotions.

Re: Disable Google Drive drive letter

#47

Post by 2ion »

richardwhiuk wrote: post #27
2ion wrote: post #19

It needs to run with elevated privileges in order to do this, right? So into the trash it goes. This is right up there with keyboard and mice configuration software running as daemons with administration privileges.

No, if you install the app just for the user who is logged in then you don't need elevated permissions to install or upgrade.

So an unprivileged service can map drive letters on Windows?

Re: Disable Google Drive drive letter

#48

Post by atatatat »

Gigachad wrote: post #9
aclelland wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've come to accept that it's just a cost cutting measure for larger tech companies, why offer users an option when you don't need to? It costs extra to document, test and offer support for. I can't really think of any software from a major tech company that I use frequently and that's been updated to give me _more_ toggles to customize the app. It's always to take things away.

Apple actually does really well at this where it matters. Their accessibility settings allow a huge amount of customization for making the devices easier to use for disabled people. They just don't have android rom style settings like changing the unlock screen to swipe down rather than up or turning the battery indicator in to a circle.

Or the ability to change your system apps.

Re: Disable Google Drive drive letter

#49

Post by atatatat »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #38
marderfarker2 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You already lost control when you let someone else store your files for you. This drive letter issue is just a GUI problem.

In any normal market, the customer is the one is control, because they are the one paying. Something is seriously rotten.

That would be the tech knowledge of the individual. Record lows, considering the pervasive tech.

We've taken the opportunity of technological advancement and turned it into societal devolvement in the name of convenience, instead.

Re: Disable Google Drive drive letter

#50

Post by asvitkine »

simion314 wrote: post #18
aclelland wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've come to accept that it's just a cost cutting measure for larger tech companies, why offer users an option when you don't need to? It costs extra to document, test and offer support for. I can't really think of any software from a major tech company that I use frequently and that's been updated to give me _more_ toggles to customize the app. It's always to take things away.

Exactly. For example on a small company we had one user that needed RTL support, this ment we create backend code to store his perferences, front end code to add UI for it and testing the feature. We implemented because for a small company each user is important where big companies or projects(Firefox,GNOME will force this minorities to go elsewhere)

Uhm, there are literally hundreds of millions of people in the world that use RTL languages.

For mainstream, global software this is not a niche feature but a core requirement.

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