Live data from Hacker News

Google Drive: Is the Dropbox Party Over?

searchenginejournal.com

11–20 of 221 posts

Re: Google Drive: Is the Dropbox Party Over?

#11

I hope they'll give the option to do your own encryption, too.

Since one of the main features of GDrive will be to share files between Google Apps, I doubt that's plausible.

There's nothing stopping you from encrypting each file before upload, but then that file won't really be usable with Google's apps.

Re: Google Drive: Is the Dropbox Party Over?

#13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's dangerous for Dropbox because GDrive will be automatically integrated into all Google services. I can access it anywhere from any Google service or device. No need to think about uploading, downloading, copying, pasting--it's just there. I don't use GDocs because it's the best. I use it because all my friends use Gmail and sharing docs with them is super easy. I see GDrive having the same benefits. Sharing on Dr…

Can it be scripted though? I want to set up a cron task to gzip a directory and send it to GDrive every night.

if its a desktop program like dropbox with a synced folder, you can write a script to place the gzip in the synced folder, and then it will sync automatically

Re: Google Drive: Is the Dropbox Party Over?

#14
post #2

i remember hearing the same argument when google made google videos to compete with youtube, and we all know how that ended. That said, there were social and community aspects there that don't apply here, and google's cheaper storage prices and larger feature set may give it a leg up.

Google Video launched a month before YouTube fyi.

Re: Google Drive: Is the Dropbox Party Over?

#16
Dropbox is a brilliant piece of software however it's hard to justify more than $10/month for backup as a consumer. Since 50Gb only now covers my photos and docs, doesn't cover my music and even my photo collection's needs trimming to fit I would move to GDrive very quickly rather than double that spend to get to the next tier.

I've long hoped that Dropbox would segment their pricing plans more. It's unsettling having an increasing volume of content not backed up and if GDrive really does deliver I would move to it. My loyalty is to DB and I've yet to be convinced on GDrive's usability but it doesn't make sense to pay an extra $100/year as a loyalty fee.

Re: Google Drive: Is the Dropbox Party Over?

#17
post #2

i remember hearing the same argument when google made google videos to compete with youtube, and we all know how that ended. That said, there were social and community aspects there that don't apply here, and google's cheaper storage prices and larger feature set may give it a leg up.

It ended with Google buying YouTube. Do you think they're going to buy DropBox too?

I highly doubt it. What i meant was that google videos failed. Google bought youtube for its community, not for its backend. This is not relevant with regard to dropbox, as file sync is a technical problem and google is fully capable of providing a technical solution.

Re: Google Drive: Is the Dropbox Party Over?

#18
Two thoughts:

- I don't think the Dropbox party is over, and won't be for a while, because of non-techies. Dropbox is drop dead simple and non-technical people have gravitate to it and won't see much of a reason to switch. Also, Google has so many different products now, sometimes when you mention Google to non-technical people they get an overwhelming deer-in-the-headlights look.

- As a technical person, I am excited to hopefully have more online and offline document editing capability with Google Drive. Back when I had a Blackberry, Dropbox's app allowed me to edit files through the app, but with my iPhone app, I can't edit files on my Dropbox.

Re: Google Drive: Is the Dropbox Party Over?

#19

Dropbox is a brilliant piece of software however it's hard to justify more than $10/month for backup as a consumer. Since 50Gb only now covers my photos and docs, doesn't cover my music and even my photo collection's needs trimming to fit I would move to GDrive very quickly rather than double that spend to get to the next tier. I've long hoped that Dropbox would segment their pricing plans more. It's unsettling havin…

in the dropbox forums company representatives constantly comment that lower price plans are not feasible. That said, I've always been disappointed by companies that make you buy buckets of units (like postpaid cellphone plans) that they know you will never use rather than offering a per unit price. If the cost to provide 1gb of storage per month is higher than 10/50, than charge the higher price, don't hide it by shifting the cost of power users onto regular users.

Re: Google Drive: Is the Dropbox Party Over?

#20

Dropbox is a brilliant piece of software however it's hard to justify more than $10/month for backup as a consumer. Since 50Gb only now covers my photos and docs, doesn't cover my music and even my photo collection's needs trimming to fit I would move to GDrive very quickly rather than double that spend to get to the next tier. I've long hoped that Dropbox would segment their pricing plans more. It's unsettling havin…

It is not "simply backup". They provide a user friendly synchronization service for files between all your devices. Sure, for simply stashing files there are much cheaper options such as Amazon S3 or simply a friend's linux box in his basement... but it is not entirely a fair comparison.
Post reply on HN