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Google Drive detailed: 5 GB of free space, launching next week

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Re: Google Drive detailed: 5 GB of free space, launching next week

#101

Post by joeblau »

robrenaud wrote: post #90
jacquesm wrote: post #9

We've seen this before. It was called google video. Google ended up buying youtube because even they could no longer deny they'd lost the battle and they couldn't risk it going to a competitor. Dropbox is in for a rough ride, as long as they can maintain focus and quality (beat them at customer support, that should be a walk in the park) they'll be the biggest YC exit ever once Google has run its course with the Goog…

Wow, it's amazing how everyone thinks Google Video entered against the entrenched Youtube and lost. Google Video preceded Youtube. Google Video was launched before Youtube was even formed as a company. Youtube just straight up out-competed Google Video. Probably being a startup, capable of being naughty[1], staying closer to the copyright infringement line, and being willing to piss of big media companies helped them…

Actually, the Google Videos version that originally launched was nothing like YouTube. Google Videos was originally made to search closed captioned TV, not to service user uploaded content. Also the original Google Video did not actually let you watch any videos.

Google changed to copy YouTube's style of video hosting after YouTube already gained traction. The version of Google Videos that people are familiar with came out after YouTube. The version of Google Videos that you're talking about died.

http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2005-01-25-n90.html

Re: Google Drive detailed: 5 GB of free space, launching next week

#102

Post by zerostar07 »

lawdawg wrote: post #38
robomartin wrote: post #21

OK, so now when they suspend your Google account you also get to experience loosing whatever you had in Google Drive. Just for this I am converting my Dropbox account into one of their paid packages to do my part in ensuring they stick around. One would hope that at one point Google might start to realize that the way they are handling accounts could work against their own interests. I --and I am sure others-- have e…

which free service (or service that pays you money, ala AdSense) has a better approach to customer service? Honestly curious because I hear a lot of complaints about Google, but I have a feeling that Facebook, Bing/Microsoft, etc aren't any better.

All the big guys suck. But,

Google will assign a real person to talk to if you have more than ~30M views / month or something.

Paypal requires lots of paperwork here in the EU, sometimes their staff will make mistakes or ask you to provide information twice.

Facebook is horrible. In one case, when asked about something simple as their billing address, they gave the wrong answer (causing reporting problems). Their developer support is generally a real pain.

Re: Google Drive detailed: 5 GB of free space, launching next week

#103

Post by zerostar07 »

gojomo wrote: post #84

'Drive' is kind of a backward-looking name – the evolution of both appliance devices and the cloud means people have less reason to think of 'floppy drives', 'hard drives' and 'flash drives' than ever before. Also, the Google self-driving cars have had more popular attention lately than their cloud storage feints... so many people seeing "Google Drive coming soon" are going to think it's the computer-driver.

Since there is no driver, it will probably be Google Cars (tm)

Re: Google Drive detailed: 5 GB of free space, launching next week

#104

Post by pyre »

tiziano88 wrote: post #88
robomartin wrote: post #21

OK, so now when they suspend your Google account you also get to experience loosing whatever you had in Google Drive. Just for this I am converting my Dropbox account into one of their paid packages to do my part in ensuring they stick around. One would hope that at one point Google might start to realize that the way they are handling accounts could work against their own interests. I --and I am sure others-- have e…

Google has a brilliant customer service, it's just that many people do not understand the meaning of the term "customer". If you use their free services, you are not a customer; if you do pay for it, then you get proper support and everything. It seems pretty fair to me.

I think that it would be more transparent if they made this perfectly clear to gmail users when they are signing up rather than relying on them inherently knowing this (or reading it buried somewhere in the TOS). I doubt that the majority of Gmail users (or just Google Account holders) realize this.

I'll say this, though. If a majority of your customers do not realize the full implications of what their terms are with you, then you are either:

1) Actively trying to prevent your customers from learning about the terms.

2) Relying on the general naivety of your customers.

3) Incompetent, in that you're not doing your job of letting your customers know what they are signing up for.

If more people were fully aware of the fact that their Gmail account could be randomly closed at any time, without notice, but still used the service because they accepted the risk, then it would be a different story.

Re: Google Drive detailed: 5 GB of free space, launching next week

#105

Post by CamperBob »

ry0ohki wrote: post #20
feral wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are huge network effects at play with youtube. People discover new content (related videos) as they browse the site. With Dropbox, it seems, to me, like there are much fewer network effects at play. I don't know what percentage of activity on Dropbox involves sharing between Dropbox customers, but I'd guess its low? I also think its a big deal that I already sign into my Google account on every computer I use;…

I don't know, that's one of the biggest benefits of Dropbox, I tell someone I'll add a shared drive and 9 times out of ten they already have a Dropbox account (in my tech world bubble at least)

Does this sharing process still carve a giant hunk out of the recipient's Dropbox space allocation, though?

That's what I don't understand about any of these services -- Google, Dropbox, and whoever else. If anything is "unlimited" these days, it's disk space. At this level of play 5 GB is about 25 cents worth of storage at most.

Paying for disk space in the cloud is no smarter than renting a cable box from Comcast or leasing your phone from AT&T. If Dropbox could just get past the notion that disk space is worth anything, their value proposition would become a lot more interesting.

If bandwidth is the real concern, which I imagine it is, then they need to find a way to charge for that instead.

Re: Google Drive detailed: 5 GB of free space, launching next week

#107

Post by Teapot »

robocat wrote: post #93
Teapot wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google wants people to Login. And remain Logged in. Gathering data about people is more valuable when it's tied to an individual. (I'm very restrictive when i do have to login. I do what i'm there for. Nothing else. Then quickly logout.)

Don't you also need to remove cookies and perhaps clear local data?

I shouldn't have to. But i got no way to be sure Google leaves me completely. I auto-clear all types of cookies on each browser exit anyway, for performance.

Re: Google Drive detailed: 5 GB of free space, launching next week

#108

Post by stock_toaster »

tiziano88 wrote: post #88
robomartin wrote: post #21

OK, so now when they suspend your Google account you also get to experience loosing whatever you had in Google Drive. Just for this I am converting my Dropbox account into one of their paid packages to do my part in ensuring they stick around. One would hope that at one point Google might start to realize that the way they are handling accounts could work against their own interests. I --and I am sure others-- have e…

Google has a brilliant customer service, it's just that many people do not understand the meaning of the term "customer". If you use their free services, you are not a customer; if you do pay for it, then you get proper support and everything. It seems pretty fair to me.

> if you do pay for it, then you get proper support and everything

I wouldn't call it 'proper' support.

Last company I was at (2 years ago or so) got pretty awful support, and we paid for google apps (50 bucks a person per year, plus whatever the integrated postini cost [$5 a month per user or something?], for 100+ people). It was a minimum of 1 or 2 day turnaround for support, via email only for anything other than 'the entire site is down'. Not sure if that has changed or not since then.

Re: Google Drive detailed: 5 GB of free space, launching next week

#109

Post by icebraining »

ep103 wrote: post #53
wvenable wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everything is archived online and I don't need a local copy. Even with Gmail, I hope you have a second copy of your data somewhere. You never know when your account might just disappear.

Do you know a good method of going about this? Thunderbird's backup utility (syncing to Gmail, downloading, then saving the thunderbird app data locally) is broken. Each backup / restore via TBird lost another ~350 emails.

If you're on UNIX/Linux, offlineimap[1] seems to work fine. I use it as my main email access, syncing IMAP to a Maildir which is then read by the client, and I've never lost an email.

[1]: http://offlineimap.org/

Re: Google Drive detailed: 5 GB of free space, launching next week

#110

Post by ekianjo »

robomartin wrote: post #21

OK, so now when they suspend your Google account you also get to experience loosing whatever you had in Google Drive. Just for this I am converting my Dropbox account into one of their paid packages to do my part in ensuring they stick around. One would hope that at one point Google might start to realize that the way they are handling accounts could work against their own interests. I --and I am sure others-- have e…

That's really a BIG issue with all the Google services. In case something wrong happens with your Google account, it's like you lose your email, your mobile device (if Android-based) whatever data you are storing, whatever data you are sharing (youtube account and pictures, photos), etc... the implications are far-reaching. For me, this centralization of services also become a deal-breaker. All accounts should be clearly separated by services, if not the risk of loss in case of failure is just too great.
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