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Introducing Google Drive... yes, really

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Re: Introducing Google Drive... yes, really

#82
post #31

Wow it's cheap, I was looking at it thinking $5 per month for 20gb, that's pretty competitive. Then I saw it was $5 per year! I guess they have the infrastructure to do this and still make profit.

Where do you see that? It says 25GB for $2.49/month - which is still great.

(nevermind: they were apparently just slow to update their purchase page. The base price is now $2.50/mo for 25GB)

https://accounts.google.com/b/0/PurchaseStorage

This is linked from the Google Drive app icon in the OS X system tray as "buy more storage".

''' Purchase additional storage

Google storage is shared between Gmail, Picasa Web Albums, and Google Docs. You get extra space in all these services, in addition to your current free quota. Learn more Select a plan:

20 GB ($5.00 USD per year)

80 GB ($20.00 USD per year)

200 GB ($50.00 USD per year)

400 GB ($100.00 USD per year)

1 TB ($256.00 USD per year) Need even more storage?

Buy 20 GB for $5.00 per year

Store up to 10000 photos from a 5MP camera. Your new plan will automatically renew each year, but you can disable auto-renewal at any time by returning to this page and choosing the free plan. We will contact you 30 days prior to renewal.

Please allow up to 24 hours for your new storage amount to appear in all services. Learn more '''

Re: Introducing Google Drive... yes, really

#83
post #43

Does Dropbox intrusively scan personal files, if not then I'd prefer to go with them since I don't want Google prying into my files.

Why would Google - or any other company for that matter - spend time and money on something as complicated and error-prone like that? They would never be able to sell it to anyone and it could ruin their brand substantially if it ever came out.

I don't see why you would even consider this to be happening.

Re: Introducing Google Drive... yes, really

#84
post #70
post #34

Anyone know if this is the original Google Drive they wrote all those years ago and never launched, or a new thing they reused the name for?

Gdrive was killed in 2008 (according to Steven Levy's book In the Plex after some top management lobbying by Sundar Pichai .. the guy who now wrote the blogpost) but as this was 4 years ago and a lot of waves have passed since then, I suspect - without any internal knowledge - that this is a complete new iteration of the same topic.

I wonder how different this is from insync ( insynchq.com ) when it comes to syncing googledocs.

Re: Introducing Google Drive... yes, really

#86
post #34

Anyone know if this is the original Google Drive they wrote all those years ago and never launched, or a new thing they reused the name for?

It's likely something new. This is very much integrated into Google Docs (Docs actually gets replaced with Drive when you opt-in), so it's different than just a storage system. Like a commenter mentioned above, this is all about replacing your hard drive and the "Open With.../Save As..." dialogs in your operating system. The previous iterations of this were simply a generic filesystem interface to the shared storage pool Google was using for Picasa, Docs, Gmail, and other services. This is way better.

Re: Introducing Google Drive... yes, really

#87
post #39

Haven't seen anything on the key question here for me ... how are they monetizing this? I'd rather not upload a ton of personal data to Google until I know how they're making money off of it. (Do they plan to integrate your documents into your search results?)

They "monetize" it by charging money for use of the service.

Re: Introducing Google Drive... yes, really

#88

Here's the most important paragraph in the blog post that most people will gloss over (because Google glossed over it): "Drive is built to work seamlessly with your overall Google experience. You can attach photos from Drive to posts in Google+, and soon you’ll be able to attach stuff from Drive directly to emails in Gmail. Drive is also an open platform, so we’re working with many third-party developers so you can d…

"You can attach photos from Drive to posts in Google+"

And this reminded me how much stuff I already have sitting in Google. A minor glitch last week meant I couldn't access my webmail (though I primarily use IMAP), which made me start thinking about this.

I'm really pleased to see Drive come out but at the moment I feel reluctant to put too much stuff into it because I become even more dependent on the big G (and I'm actually surprised I feel this way and it's only a recent thing). Perhaps this feeling will fade but I'm not sure.

Having an OS on my machine is great since the maker (MS/Apple) can't simply turn it off. Having Google become my "cloud OS" makes me nervous.

Re: Introducing Google Drive... yes, really

#90
post #34

Anyone know if this is the original Google Drive they wrote all those years ago and never launched, or a new thing they reused the name for?

It's essentially a renamed Google Docs but allowing you to upload non-document files (although I think you might have been able to do that already)
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