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Introducing Google Drive... yes, really

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Re: Introducing Google Drive... yes, really

#472

Few of my observations from this announcement: In Google's vision of the future, your computer is a thin client. There is no My Documents folder, as everything personal lives on gdrive. The Chrome app store becomes the new operating system. Apps will have access to your files, they will be able to search them, open them, and operate on them. You will never see the "Open file" dialog box again. In this world, the conc…

You are forgetting: files and folders aren't computing concepts. They were carried over into computing from physical things that people had found useful for - literally - hundreds of years.

You have a group of related things that you would like to associate with each other and operate on as a single thing - what would you call this? Why not a "folder"?

Re: Introducing Google Drive... yes, really

#473
post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should also have list going the other - things Dropbox has that GDrive doesn't: * Linux support * Headless (command line interface) * Public bug tracking and feature requests (votebox) Unsure about these * Shared folders I'm struggling to come up with more.

Google has a huge history of shutting down services or at least dramatically changing their pricing model (even from free to expensive).

[deleted]

Re: Introducing Google Drive... yes, really

#474

Yeah I think I'll pass. SkyDrive gives me 25GB and their "access any file on your computer (even those outside of your skydrive folder) from skydrive.com" feature is amazing. Plus like someone else already mentioned, having GDrive download hyperlinks is subpar imo. I'd rather get the doc or xls back, edit it on a client, and have it re-upload and convert to gdoc format. SkyDrive: 25gb (or 7 which is still > 5), cheap…

Or uses Android.

Re: Introducing Google Drive... yes, really

#475

Things I'd like to see before I consider using or recommending GDrive: - A statement from Google regarding whether or not they will scan the data and files in GDrive to develop further profiling information or other data about the user - A guarantee from Google that GDrive will not be subject to account lockout in the event of account suspension due to AdWords/AdSense algorithmic (or human) triggers. In fact, I'd wan…

Why not have a Google account for work and one for personal use? Either way, getting locked out of Drive is pretty silly--like Dropbox you always have backups synced on your machines.

Re: Introducing Google Drive... yes, really

#476
post #100

What might go wrong? (This is a test of imagination, not confidence.) Google might finally unleash GDrive and steal a lot of Dropbox's thunder (especially if this takes place before launch.)... From Dropbox's 2007 YC Application, http://dl.dropbox.com/u/27532820/app.html I love reading old YC applications. I wonder if someday, they'll become the 21st century version of Harvard Business Review case studies.

Is there an online open archive of YC applications?

Re: Introducing Google Drive... yes, really

#477
post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[citation needed]

For which part? That photos take most of the space? Or that they're virtually un-de-dupable? I'm fairly sure about the former (having seen some private numbers that I'm not allowed to share) -- although you can think through it yourself. What other kind of data is as easily and commonly produced as photos/videos and takes up so much space? The latter is definitely true since it's a hard research problem that I've spe…

What a fascinating problem, especially when it comes to personal photos that aren't really that 'personal.'

A thousand people will all visit Paris today, and all take a picture of the Eiffel Tower, and all upload said picture to their favourite cloud storage platform.

Is there any reason why we need a thousand, ever so slightly different, pictures of the Eiffel Tower from one day in April, stored in the cloud for eternity? Would people even notice if their images were quietly 'de-duplicated'?

Re: Introducing Google Drive... yes, really

#478

Yeah I think I'll pass. SkyDrive gives me 25GB and their "access any file on your computer (even those outside of your skydrive folder) from skydrive.com" feature is amazing. Plus like someone else already mentioned, having GDrive download hyperlinks is subpar imo. I'd rather get the doc or xls back, edit it on a client, and have it re-upload and convert to gdoc format. SkyDrive: 25gb (or 7 which is still > 5), cheap…

Microsoft continues to cling to some weird file extension restrictions regarding what you can do with SkyDrive. Leading to idiotic documentation notes like this:

"(downloading any audio file type, and uploading Waveform Audio File Format (.wav) only, is supported)"

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/live/hh826545.aspx#f...

Yeah, I get it. No MP3. But dozens of common file formats are missing and they just quietly added support for a few Adobe types. Yes, SkyDrive: the system that won't let you store an .eps file.

Re: Introducing Google Drive... yes, really

#479
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"You can attach photos from Drive to posts in Google+" And this reminded me how much stuff I already have sitting in Google. A minor glitch last week meant I couldn't access my webmail (though I primarily use IMAP), which made me start thinking about this. I'm really pleased to see Drive come out but at the moment I feel reluctant to put too much stuff into it because I become even more dependent on the big G (and I'…

Even if it feels better to be in control, Google is still better than most individuals at not losing data.

Is there even evidence of Google really verifiably loosing any user data? If not, considering the amount of data they handle, they can probably be considered the best at not loosing data, from a bayesian point of view.

Re: Introducing Google Drive... yes, really

#480
post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For which part? That photos take most of the space? Or that they're virtually un-de-dupable? I'm fairly sure about the former (having seen some private numbers that I'm not allowed to share) -- although you can think through it yourself. What other kind of data is as easily and commonly produced as photos/videos and takes up so much space? The latter is definitely true since it's a hard research problem that I've spe…

What a fascinating problem, especially when it comes to personal photos that aren't really that 'personal.' A thousand people will all visit Paris today, and all take a picture of the Eiffel Tower, and all upload said picture to their favourite cloud storage platform. Is there any reason why we need a thousand, ever so slightly different, pictures of the Eiffel Tower from one day in April, stored in the cloud for ete…

Reminds me of an art installation I saw somewhere with the "21st century camera" (can't remember if that was the actual name). It was a black box with a single red button, which when pressed captured the lat-long of the box and the current time, so you could search on picasa, flickr etc for geo-tagged pictures around that time. Fascinating to think about.
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