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Save more with Google Drive

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Re: Save more with Google Drive

#301

Post by genwin »

blisterpeanuts wrote: post #113

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.…

Storing in another city or house is too much hassle for me. A buried drive (waterproof container), and DropBox, both storing only TrueCrypt-encrypted files except for pix. If the NSA still reads it, oh well it's non-incriminating anyway.

Re: Save more with Google Drive

#302

Post by joedevon »

I happily pay for both Box AND Dropbox and this does not in the least entice me.

Google made a social contract with the world. It was a bad marketing move to break the contract. Again and again.

You'd have to be a fool to trust your data with them today. Because they sell your information let alone that they drop services like this when they get bored.

Not sure if anyone thought of this, but some of their products could have turned into a spin off company rather than being shuttered. For example, offer people internally to take over Reader, spin it off and let it find a business model. At least it would have felt like they tried to honor their social contract.

As for Dropbox or Box being around in 5 years, the biggest risk is a company like Google buying them and then shutting them down.

Re: Save more with Google Drive

#303

Post by herokusaki »

_delirium wrote: post #121
smtddr wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are some non-American & reliable cloud companies?

Depending on what kind of cloud services you're looking for, Jottacloud (Norway) is vaguely like Dropbox. Exoscale (Switzerland) is roughly analogous to AWS.

How is your experience with Jottacloud?

Re: Save more with Google Drive

#304

Post by gerner »

eslaught wrote: post #238

What I find interesting about this is that the Google Drive is now significantly less expensive than Amazon S3, and even comparable to Amazon Glacier. Google Drive: $10/1000GB = $0.01/GB Amazon S3: $0.85/GB for the first 1 TB Amazon Glacier: $0.01/GB (all prices per month) This means that any service built on top of Amazon S3 will never be less expensive than Google Drive. Period. Sure, there are caveats. Google Driv…

Isn't Amazon S3 $0.085 / GB for the first TB/month (1/10 of what you've said)?

That's still 8.5x Google Drive. Being competitive with glacier jives with what I've heard the underlying cost of storage hardware is (still with room for profit). However, from what I hear running the request serving on top of that is fairly expensive (which is why glacier has big restrictions).

AWS says they're a cost plus org which means they drop prices as their costs drop. But that plus can be quite large.

Being #1, first to market, etc. has a big advantage. Despite knowing (or believing) these things, my org still happily spends plenty at AWS.

Re: Save more with Google Drive

#305

Post by inyaface »

simonsarris wrote: post #9

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…

Google doesn't make products with the consumer experience in mind. This makes this decision easy for me.

Re: Save more with Google Drive

#306

Post by dragonwriter »

barrkel wrote: post #136
watty wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a betting man but if I had to put $1 on which service (Dropbox or Google Drive) would disappear first I'd bet Dropbox.

I'd probably bet on Google putting Dropbox out of business with competition, then getting rid of Drive because it's no longer a growth area.

> I'd probably bet on Google putting Dropbox out of business with competition, then getting rid of Drive because it's no longer a growth area.

That's not too unlikely, if by "Drive" you mean the desktop sync application, which pretty clearly has always been pretty tangential to the strategic purpose of Drive, which is first and foremost a cloud storage platform for web apps (Google first-party apps, institutional customer second-party apps, and ISV third-party apps).

Re: Save more with Google Drive

#307

Post by mwfunk »

drdaeman wrote: post #95
mikevm wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

your privacy.

If he meant he's switching from other Google plan then there're probably no changes except for quota. If he meant he's switching from Dropbox it's not like Google's any worse or better in this regard. Both store files unencrypted (or encrypted with a key known to storage provider, although I somehow doubt it), both are probably not immune against a TLA-grade adversary. If he meant he's switching from, say, Tarsnap or…

He specifically said he said he would be switching from Dropbox, and the privacy question isn't whether or not someone could hack Drive, but rather can he trust Google to not examine his files to better characterize him for targeted ads. Regardless of whether Drive or Dropbox is more secure from hackers or the NSA or whomever, Drive's business reason for existing is specifically so they can look at your files, whereas Dropbox's business reason for existing is so that you can give them money to store your stuff. Google can make these kinds of price cuts because the money people pay them for it is only a portion of the income they receive as a result of Drive.

I say that as someone who uses Drive instead of Dropbox because the balance of their respective pros and cons, for me personally, leans towards Drive. I've got no emotional attachment or aversion to either one.

Re: Save more with Google Drive

#308

Post by inyaface »

jtchang wrote: post #28

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…

Google sucks at interfaces. Dropbox blows them away in usability.

Re: Save more with Google Drive

#309

Post by munificent »

joedevon wrote: post #302

I happily pay for both Box AND Dropbox and this does not in the least entice me. Google made a social contract with the world. It was a bad marketing move to break the contract. Again and again. You'd have to be a fool to trust your data with them today. Because they sell your information let alone that they drop services like this when they get bored. Not sure if anyone thought of this, but some of their products co…

> For example, offer people internally to take over Reader, spin it off and let it find a business model.

Reader was implemented on top of Google's huge internal infrastructure. "Spinning it off" would be equivalent to re-writing it from scratch.

> At least it would have felt like they tried to honor their social contract.

I can't fathom the sense of entitlement in this sentence. Maybe I'm biased because I'm a Googler, but my understanding is that Google gave you a high quality news reader for free for many years.

Google spent their own money to provide that to you. And when they eventually decide to stop burning their own money, somehow they've failed to live up to their end of some "contract"? What were the terms of this contract? What did the users offer in return?

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