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I lost years’ worth of Google Docs files because of a poor user interface

googledrivesucks.com

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Re: I lost years’ worth of Google Docs files because of a poor user interface

#51

Post by 300bps »

Google definitely jumped into Drive and Apps without putting any thought about privacy or recoverability into it whatsoever. There's a reason why they keep launching in beta - because they get an MVP out the door and then people start using it as if it's ready for production.

Further, everyone I know that uses Google Apps / Drive has no idea how to use it properly. One common thing I see is people will send a link to a particular document not knowing they've unwittingly given the person access to all of their documents. One person sent a link out to a spreadsheet that had a beach house signup in it. A couple of clicks in the unfamiliar user interface and I find myself looking at the filenames of all his docs - one of which was potentially very embarrassing. For his sake, I didn't mention it but only sent him an article later on about how to secure your Google Drive files.

Re: I lost years’ worth of Google Docs files because of a poor user interface

#52

Post by woof »

FigBug wrote: post #25
casca wrote: post #8

Everyone hates making backups. Everyone loves them when something happens. There are many free online data storage systems. If you're happy with the privacy implications, it's not hard to run Google Drive, Dropbox and box.net on the same directory for some degree of resilience.

You can't make backups of gdoc files, the content is never stored locally, it's only on googles servers.

https://code.google.com/p/gdocbackup/

Re: I lost years’ worth of Google Docs files because of a poor user interface

#53

Post by tytso »

If files weren't completely deleted when the trash was emptied, then people would be kvetching about the horrible security implications and the only way to be sure was to keep files on the local disk so that when you emptied the trash, the files would be really gone....

Re: I lost years’ worth of Google Docs files because of a poor user interface

#54

Post by jchung »

cldr wrote: post #19

While I sympathize with the author (it must have hurt pretty bad if it made him go create an entire website dedicated to "google drive sucks") I thought it was quite obvious that files created on Google Drive with their document editor were not actually copied to your computer with the Google Drive program. It's easy to see when you try to open the file with Notepad or a similar local text editor. Additionally you ge…

Glad you thought it was obvious. I just learned it after reading the OP's article. Not obvious enough, apparently.

Re: I lost years’ worth of Google Docs files because of a poor user interface

#55

Post by rch »

nollidge wrote: post #37
dendory wrote: post #11

He was unlucky and didn't think things through too much, especially when dealing with such imporant files, but I agree with him that the way it's implemented is silly. If you provide a program that syncs your documents, with the name of your files, to your local system, people expect these files to be your actual documents, not empty links. Every other online storage system works that way. If you move a file out of y…

But how could that possibly work for a document that's edited in a browser? What file format would such a document be stored in when there's no local editor available for it?

How about a proprietary binary format that would reload the data if it was synced back to Drive/Docs at a future time? As the format evolves, an online tool could at least extract csv/text versions of older data from the original files.

Edit: HDF5 is great for storing OT data too, even if the operations and handling are proprietary.

Re: I lost years’ worth of Google Docs files because of a poor user interface

#57

Post by FigBug »

bighi wrote: post #28
eli wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, if not clear to the users, then it isn't good UI -- even if it's obvious to you.

But this is how EVERY DAMN cloud drive works. It's how EVERY DRIVE in the history of computers work! If I take my files out of my HD, they will be deleted from the HD. If I move my files out of my flash drive, they will be deleted from my flash drive. The only way that I would be surprised by this behaviour is if I had never used a computer at all in my life.

Except when you copy files from your hd or flash drive, you except the copies in the new location to actually be files. That's how every drive I've ever used works. That's not how google drive works.

Re: I lost years’ worth of Google Docs files because of a poor user interface

#58

Post by crazygringo »

koko775 wrote: post #30

Well, he deleted years' worth of Google Docs files because of a poor user interface, but he lost the Google Docs files because of an irresponsible backup policy. Sad, to be sure, but there's no kind of critical document storage that doesn't need a backup.

But there is no way to backup Google Docs files, is there?

What exactly was the "responsible" backup policy supposed to have been?

Re: I lost years’ worth of Google Docs files because of a poor user interface

#59

Post by woof »

bighi wrote: post #28
eli wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, if not clear to the users, then it isn't good UI -- even if it's obvious to you.

But this is how EVERY DAMN cloud drive works. It's how EVERY DRIVE in the history of computers work! If I take my files out of my HD, they will be deleted from the HD. If I move my files out of my flash drive, they will be deleted from my flash drive. The only way that I would be surprised by this behaviour is if I had never used a computer at all in my life.

Turn of CAPS LOCK and read the article!

document.gdoc is not a file, you are mistaken

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