How Google Docs Killed GDrive

#1

Post by timf » Sun, May 22, 2011, 3:42 AM UTC

How Google Docs Killed GDrive
googlesystem.blogspot.com

Re: How Google Docs Killed GDrive

#2

Post by xtacy » Sun, May 22, 2011, 5:19 AM UTC

    "I don't think we need GDrive anymore." Horowitz
    asked why not. "Files are so 1990," said Pichai.
    "I don't think we need files anymore."

I wonder what they would think of that statement given Dropbox's adoption.

Re: How Google Docs Killed GDrive

#3

Post by amorphid » Sun, May 22, 2011, 5:41 AM UTC

I've mostly stopped using Google Docs because MS Office + Dropbox is so much more handy in the majority of situations for me.

Re: How Google Docs Killed GDrive

#4

Post by neworbit » Sun, May 22, 2011, 6:09 AM UTC

Dear Google, you're doing it wrong. We understand that you would like google lockin on our file system, but the rest of us who do not necessarily have 24-7 100% reliable connectivity or prefer to work on things quietly offline (for instance, competing search technology) might think files resident somewhere else might not be so bad.

Re: How Google Docs Killed GDrive

#5

Post by yuhong » Sun, May 22, 2011, 6:17 AM UTC

Note that you can always import/export documents off Google Docs in another format.

Re: How Google Docs Killed GDrive

#6

Post by nezumi » Sun, May 22, 2011, 6:23 AM UTC

neworbit wrote: post #4

Dear Google, you're doing it wrong. We understand that you would like google lockin on our file system, but the rest of us who do not necessarily have 24-7 100% reliable connectivity or prefer to work on things quietly offline (for instance, competing search technology) might think files resident somewhere else might not be so bad.

How would the GDrive help you with that?

Re: How Google Docs Killed GDrive

#7

Post by riobard » Sun, May 22, 2011, 6:27 AM UTC

GDrive = “syncing files, viewing files on the Web, shared spaces for collaborating on a document, offline access, local IO speeds” sounds exactly like Dropbox.

Apparently they are thinking too far ahead in the future where Internet connection is ubiquitous and super fast while ignoring the reality.

Dropbox's popularity proved GDrive would be a great product. I would guess the engineers at Google should be as good as, if not better than, guys at Dropbox. Given the planned launch time in 2008, it might very well kill Dropbox right at the beginning, or Dropbox might be a no-go for YC since Google would be doing it so good for free.

PS: Does anyone feel this is just internal politics to kill competing projects so his own project (Sundar is the lead of Chrome) can get more resources?

Re: How Google Docs Killed GDrive

#8

Post by bauchidgw » Sun, May 22, 2011, 6:45 AM UTC

so google docs is the google wave of file storage?

said that: i use google docs but i just love my dropbox (after i got rid of the growl spam the installed on my system)

Re: How Google Docs Killed GDrive

#9

Post by Lmclean » Sun, May 22, 2011, 6:51 AM UTC

http://cyberduck.ch/ allows access to google docs via it's FTP client, pretty sweet.

I still prefer dropbox though but I use encrypted disk images for documents.

Re: How Google Docs Killed GDrive

#10

Post by chmike » Sun, May 22, 2011, 7:13 AM UTC

riobard wrote: post #7

GDrive = “syncing files, viewing files on the Web, shared spaces for collaborating on a document, offline access, local IO speeds” sounds exactly like Dropbox. Apparently they are thinking too far ahead in the future where Internet connection is ubiquitous and super fast while ignoring the reality. Dropbox's popularity proved GDrive would be a great product. I would guess the engineers at Google should be as good as,…

That's true, but we shouldn't forget that dropbox reached the point where it is today by a remarkable marketing execution, not only a good product.