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

Save more with Google Drive

googleblog.blogspot.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 413 posts

Re: Save more with Google Drive

#111

Post by na85 »

chillingeffect wrote: post #100
tobyjsullivan wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's assess risk. 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…

they didn't tell anybody when they pulled support for sets from spreadsheets.

Yes. As we all know, removing a feature from an existing, still-supported product is exactly the same as discontinuing a product entirely without notice.

Re: Save more with Google Drive

#112

Post by shinratdr »

icebraining wrote: post #69
fletchowns wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a terrible retort. Downloading and then uploading a terabyte of data can be very expensive depending on where you live, and it can also take a very long time.

Download and then uploading a terabyte of data can be very expensive depending on where you live Dropbox doesn't have a 1TB plan, but 2x500GB costs $1000/year. On Drive, it costs $100/year. That's a difference of $900/year. I don't know where you live, but around here $900/year buys you a pretty fucking good connection, with blackjack and hookers included. it can also take a very long time. So what? You can still use…

That would be 100/month, not a year. Looks like Drive and Dropbox actually have identical pricing in this respect.

Re: Save more with Google Drive

#113

Post by blisterpeanuts »

I see two problems with massive offsite storage such as Google Drive 1 TB.

First, although $120/year may be quite cheap in the world of cloud storage, hardware's cheap. You can buy a 2-TB external hard drive for less than $120. 1-TB drives are going for $60-$70 now.

So why pay rent when you can own? Buy a couple of 1-TB drives every year, copy your stuff onto both, and store one at a relative's house in another city.

Open a port on your home workstation and voila! you have "cloud" access to your data, and you can rsync it to external drives.

Yes, it's not quite as convenient and share-able as Google Drive or Dropbox, and of course the drive stored at your relative's house is not accessible, but at least it's a back-up.

My other concern can be summed up by 3 letters: NSA. There's been no resolution to the problem of unfettered access to people's private data. What's to stop the spooks from demanding my data from Google, all 1000 gigabytes of it, and Google is not even allowed to tell me it happened. No, thanks.

Re: Save more with Google Drive

#115

Post by fletchowns »

icebraining wrote: post #69
fletchowns wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a terrible retort. Downloading and then uploading a terabyte of data can be very expensive depending on where you live, and it can also take a very long time.

Download and then uploading a terabyte of data can be very expensive depending on where you live Dropbox doesn't have a 1TB plan, but 2x500GB costs $1000/year. On Drive, it costs $100/year. That's a difference of $900/year. I don't know where you live, but around here $900/year buys you a pretty fucking good connection, with blackjack and hookers included. it can also take a very long time. So what? You can still use…

I live in the Bay Area and I pay about $800/year for 120KB/s upload (AT&T U-Verse). Certainly no blackjack and hookers included.

Re: Save more with Google Drive

#116

Post by meritt »

spinchange wrote: post #17

Single biggest shortcoming about Google Drive in an enterprise environment: There's no option to download an entire folder from a shared (public) link. We use Google Apps but not all of our customers / partners / contractors do, and some large collections of shared files need to be downloaded and not simply viewed on a public webpage.

I've found box.net to be the best solution for that. We're able to give our clients access to a hierarchy of files and folders, access just requires a password (no box.net account or software) and we even get an analytics dashboard to keep tabs on what/when they're accessing things.

https://www.box.com/business/secure-file-sharing/

If anyone has alternatives for this use-case I'd love to hear about them as well, as Box.net only offers their API (so we can auto-upload files) for enterprise accounts and that's a big problem for us.

Re: Save more with Google Drive

#117

Post by q2 »

Implicit expectation of any storage service is, data will remain private and when we remove data from there, it won't exist anywhere on Google systems in any form.

Unfortunately, Google terms and conditions says, http://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/terms/

"When you upload or otherwise submit content to our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content. The rights you grant in this license are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting, and improving our Services, and to develop new ones. This license continues even if you stop using our Services (for example, for a business listing you have added to Google Maps). "

i.e. if we store data there, we are using their service and we are giving Google "rights of ownership" permanently even after we stop using their service in future. It is definitely not good.

How can anyone give license of their personal stuff to third party?

It will be better if there is a standalone storage service which just stores,backups securely and forgets us when we opt out of their service. As far as I understand, Google drive won't fit in there. Their appetite for our personal information for advertising is not comforting.

If I misunderstood their terms, I am willing to change.

Re: Save more with Google Drive

#118

Post by microtonal »

yukichan wrote: post #99
untog wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know Dropbox will be Dropbox in 5 years. As a counterpoint to that, Dropbox might not exist in 5 years. Google most likely will. Basically, there is no answer here that guarantees the future of your cloud storage. It's useful to access your files from multiple locations, but using it for long term file archival seems like asking for disappointment (as well as being a neat way of throwing money into the sky).

Dropbox is profitable yeah? Why wouldn't they be around in 5 years? Google's prices are so much cheaper than Dropbox, but the ease of use with Dropbox, and the fact that I have my families devices and computers already set up probably means I wont ever switch. I take a picture with my phone? It's on dropbox. My wife takes a picture? It's on dropbox. I take a screenshot on my PC? It's on dropbox. I even wrote a little…

But we are a niche. Most people who have an Android phone will store pictures automatically in Google Drive/Plus (if anywhere).

Re: Save more with Google Drive

#119

Post by jusben1369 »

yukichan wrote: post #99
untog wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know Dropbox will be Dropbox in 5 years. As a counterpoint to that, Dropbox might not exist in 5 years. Google most likely will. Basically, there is no answer here that guarantees the future of your cloud storage. It's useful to access your files from multiple locations, but using it for long term file archival seems like asking for disappointment (as well as being a neat way of throwing money into the sky).

Dropbox is profitable yeah? Why wouldn't they be around in 5 years? Google's prices are so much cheaper than Dropbox, but the ease of use with Dropbox, and the fact that I have my families devices and computers already set up probably means I wont ever switch. I take a picture with my phone? It's on dropbox. My wife takes a picture? It's on dropbox. I take a screenshot on my PC? It's on dropbox. I even wrote a little…

"Dropbox is profitable yeah? Why wouldn't they be around in 5 years? Google's prices are so much cheaper than Dropbox,"

I'd just stop you there because you may have answered your own question.

Post reply on HN