Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Introducing Google Drive... yes, really

googleblog.blogspot.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

481–490 of 522 posts

Re: Introducing Google Drive... yes, really

#481

Post by GiraffeNecktie »

andyking wrote: post #477
apu wrote: 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…

"Would people even notice if their images were quietly 'de-duplicated'?"

If my wife's face does not appear next to the Eiffel Tower in the depulicated version I might be somewhat concerned.

Also photos are, at least in their highest form, an emotional response to light. One thousand good photographers shooting the Eiffel Tower at the same day and the same hour will probably generate 5,000 or more unique and interesting shots.

Re: Introducing Google Drive... yes, really

#482

Post by fromhet »

aresant wrote: post #68

I recently upgraded to Dropbox @ $199/yr for 100gb to archive our digital photos. Yesterday MSFT skydrive offered 100gb for $50/yr. Today GOOG offers 400GB for $100/yr or 1TB for $256/yr. As a consumer with "offsite backup" in mind, there doesn't seem to be an inherently high switching cost to move services away from DropBox. As a result I think that they're going to need to reassess pricing strategy within the year.…

I've had an idea about remote backup for a long time. To pay ~50usd/month isn't that much of course, but very soon buying a large hard drive pays off.

The problem with a local hard drive is that it's local, and if your house burns down, the drive does too. But what if you had your friens drive at your house and your friend had your drive at hers?

You would rsync your computers storage to your friends drive, and she would rsync hers to your drive. It'd be seemless, and (presuming you both have all-day-internet access at home, of course) you'd be able to download backed up copies from your friends drive.

Perks would be

* Owning your data (=== controlling your data)

* Being able to seemlessly encrypt it(=== owning your data)

* Having lot's of space for cheap

* Having a good reason to call your buddy

But it would require you both to have a NAS or equal up all day. But I doubt it would save enough money that someone would spend time on it instead of buing space @ dropbox/google/etc.

Re: Introducing Google Drive... yes, really

#483

Post by acdha »

apu wrote: post #450
josscrowcroft wrote: post #448

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…

Music: many people seem to use Dropbox to sync iTunes libraries (granted, iTunes Match is probably eating into that) but I'd easily believe that there are many large, duplicate media files from the same stores or torrent sites.

Re: Introducing Google Drive... yes, really

#485

Post by lobster_johnson »

mryan wrote: post #455
rwallace wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suppose you turn on two factor authentication, and then something happens to the phone number you used for it. Does that mean you've effectively lost your Gmail account? (Not a rhetorical question. I don't know how or whether you can lose a cell phone number - as opposed to just the physical phone, which presumably shouldn't be a problem - but that doesn't necessarily mean it can't happen.)

The two-factor auth system does not use the phone as a phone, just as a hardware token. Google displays a token on the login screen, you enter this in your phone and type the code it gives you in to the login page (similar to RSA's SecurID, but your phone is the device).

You seem to be referring to some othet Google auth system. The two-factor system used for Google accounts sends a code via SMS that you need to enter on the web page. It does not make you enter something on your phone.

Re: Introducing Google Drive... yes, really

#486

Post by mistercow »

AlexandrB wrote: post #173

The bottom line for me is that I no longer trust Google enough to use this. Pricing, etc. don't matter if the privacy of my data is up for grabs.

Not to mention, you never know when you're going to accidentally violate their TOS and get banned; the less you rely on them, the less that will hurt when it happens.

Re: Introducing Google Drive... yes, really

#488

Post by Drbble »

robomartin wrote: post #414

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…

> 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

The privacy policy unequivocally states that they will use all your data to improve the service, which means that humans will be extremely restricted from reading your data, but the robots have free reign.

Re: Introducing Google Drive... yes, really

#489

Post by Bjartr »

lobster_johnson wrote: post #485
mryan wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The two-factor auth system does not use the phone as a phone, just as a hardware token. Google displays a token on the login screen, you enter this in your phone and type the code it gives you in to the login page (similar to RSA's SecurID, but your phone is the device).

You seem to be referring to some othet Google auth system. The two-factor system used for Google accounts sends a code via SMS that you need to enter on the web page. It does not make you enter something on your phone.

There is an google authenticator app for android that you can register with your two factor auth so you can just open the app rather than wait for the text message.

Re: Introducing Google Drive... yes, really

#490

Post by Drbble »

rogerbinns wrote: post #330
rkudeshi wrote: post #62

[crosspost from the French translation thread - now that we have the official details, I think this comment is better discussed here.] So the things Google Drive has that Dropbox doesn't: * 2-factor authentication! * Comments on files * OCR - like Evernote, you can search against text in images (e.g. newspaper article) * Image recognition - if you upload a pic of the Eiffel Tower, you can find it with the search term…

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.

A file sync utility exposes data via the filesystem. What more headless do you need? And API for manipulating sharing ACLs and sync parameters?

I bet someone will reverse engineer the client/protocol to enable those features that are currently GUI managed.

Post reply on HN