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I currently pay Google $5/year for 20GB. I use half of this. I'm supposed to be really excited about what a good deal it is that I can pay five times as much for five times as much storage that I'm not using...?
It's now $12 a year for 100 GB. I'm not gonna tell you to be excited about it, but it doesn't feel like a horrible price.
I currently pay Google $5/year for 20GB. I use half of this. I'm supposed to be really excited about what a good deal it is that I can pay five times as much for five times as much storage that I'm not using...?
It nags me that even at this great price I'm not jumping up and down to switch from Dropbox. Why is this? -- Once you start using Dropbox there are some serious network effects. It takes a lot of work to get all your friends (both work and personal) to move. -- Even though Google Drive is so much cheaper it just doesn't seem to have the usability of Dropbox. I find the web interface really hard to use for some reason…
What's the difference between paying you to switch, and just being vastly cheaper?
I think at this point I'm a little more comfortable paying more for a company that I know won't abandon this market. I know Dropbox will be Dropbox in 5 years. How can we be sure Google Drive won't be shuttered in less time? Google is very haphazard with their web properties. Sometimes they shutter them, sometimes they stuff them in the closet. Google Reader, Wave, etc, you know. the stories. What scares me more are…
Risk A) Google might end support for Drive. They've shown that , if they do, they'll give a lot of notice. You'll have an opportunity to move your files elsewhere.
Risk B) Dropbox goes out of business. Most likely because Google is undercutting their prices by about 90%. If you are lucky, they give some notice. They also might just send everyone home and shut off the lights, like many companies do when they file for bankruptcy.
Where's the risk really?
I think at this point I'm a little more comfortable paying more for a company that I know won't abandon this market. I know Dropbox will be Dropbox in 5 years. How can we be sure Google Drive won't be shuttered in less time? Google is very haphazard with their web properties. Sometimes they shutter them, sometimes they stuff them in the closet. Google Reader, Wave, etc, you know. the stories. What scares me more are…
It's possible I'm mistaken, but all the examples of 'abandonment' you've listed are free. Here, you're paying. It's a business. You've got the same guarantee as you've got with Dropbox.
I don't know about Americans, but I hope Europeans are staying as far away from American clouds as possible. At least for government use, using non-open source American software should be considered a "national security risk" at this point, with no exaggeration.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's now $12 a year for 100 GB. I'm not gonna tell you to be excited about it, but it doesn't feel like a horrible price.
Not sure where you see $12/year for 100GB? My pricing page shows $1.99/mo for 100GB => $23.88/year. Are others seeing different pricing?
It nags me that even at this great price I'm not jumping up and down to switch from Dropbox. Why is this? -- Once you start using Dropbox there are some serious network effects. It takes a lot of work to get all your friends (both work and personal) to move. -- Even though Google Drive is so much cheaper it just doesn't seem to have the usability of Dropbox. I find the web interface really hard to use for some reason…
What's the difference between paying you to switch, and just being vastly cheaper?
Calculating it through, I think they make about $5 profit per terabyte per year, and that's using normal prices that I'd pay for hardware and power as a consumer in America.* That is considering costs for: buying drives (with a mean time to failure of 2 years), buying a server, power for the server and drives, and storing the data with 3x redundancy (two drives can fail and a third and fourth still have it).
* "In America" must be noted because power is dirt cheap there. Like .09 dollar per kWh while here we pay .2 euros.
I'm thinking of starting an online backup service myself for a fair price and no corporate bullshit, but as a student with no money nor experience I'm very hesitant. But I might try!