back to article Google motors into cloud storage with Drive

Google has thrown its hat into the cloud storage ring with the long-expected launch of Google Drive, an online vault integrated with Google Docs that allows sharing and collaboration online. "Whether you’re working with a friend on a joint research project, planning a wedding with your fiancé or tracking a budget with …

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  1. Piloti
    Linux

    Linux ?

    Nope, seems not, according to the screen I was offered when I went to http://drive.google.com/

    Will carry on with Drop Box.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Linux

      Re: Linux ?

      Too bloody right....

      Now if only one of these cloud storage providers would provide a standard rsync based interface they would earn the undying gratitude of all Linux fans... Seeing how most of these providers are probably running Linux/ *nix servers this shouldn't be an enormously complex thing to build I think...

      And no the rsync cobble via s3fs fuse mount on the Amazon S3 service doesn't count... And neither does s3rsync.com.

      1. Phil Endecott

        Re: Linux ?

        > if only one of these cloud storage providers would provide a standard

        > rsync based interface they would earn the undying gratitude of all Linux fans.

        Tried rsync.net? Works for me.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Thumb Up

          Re: Linux ?

          Thanks Phil, had a look, seems good... Although the site is a bit like Mother Hubbard's storage!

          What do you use it for and how? I'm only interested in backing up the usual personal rubbish (finance, taxes, photos, videos, the next great novel etc).

          So just need to encrypt and store/ restore... And do incremental changes only mostly.

          They recommend Duplicity but that is in Beta so not too sure about that... Or have you developed some encrypt and rsync scp/SSH scripts of your own?

          1. Phil Endecott

            Re: Linux ?

            > What do you use it for and how?

            Backups of important stuff like source code, email, and similar; mostly via hourly or daily cron jobs.

            > So just need to encrypt and store/ restore... And do incremental

            > changes only mostly.

            Encryption doesn't work well with anything incremental; I think that's a fairly fundamental problem.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Trollface

        Re: Linux ?

        You mean something like Ubuntu One? Oh sorry even they don't other flavour Linux users.....

  2. Dirk Vandenheuvel
    Holmes

    Bad news?

    Wait? Offering an inferior product is now bad news for your competitors? On what planet is that?

    1. JimmyPage Silver badge
      FAIL

      Re: Bad news?

      On planet earth.

      *Some* people will do a cost/benefit analysis, and decide that a free service that is 50% as good as a paid service is - for them - a good deal.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    how can I EVER thank you, Google!

    for offering all those fantastic freebies, like free storage protected from your snooping, free OCR in no way feeding the data into your own systems, free ads on the side, as usual in NO way related to the contents of my (my?) G-locker.

    but hey, who cares about privacy, it's all freeeeee, so come on, ya freetards, in your millions, come to daddy!

  4. Tom 35

    Zzzzz

    Don't have a google (track me) account, don't plan to get one so not interested.

    If DropBox increase the storage they give me in response that's fine.

  5. Wibble
    Big Brother

    Trust in me...

    Should one trust Google with my information, or Dropbox, or anyone else?

    That's not to say that Google can't be trusted. Or is it?

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    How nice of them

    To provide a service only their fans could love.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Another personal data grab

    and an attempt to squash competitors with user lock in

    Embrace

    Extend

    Extinguish

    Evil

  8. Unlimited

    shook up the email market

    "The levels of storage it offered on Gmail shook up the email market"

    Is that what motivated people to use Gmail? For me it was the spam filter which blew away the hotmail and spam assassin filters.

    1. Shaun 1

      Re: shook up the email market

      The storage level is what tempted me over. 2GB, I think it was at the time when I signed up.

      The storage level is now 9.2GB, and I'm still only using 373MB

      1. Boothy
        Unhappy

        Re: shook up the email market

        Erm, 9.2GB? How? Do you pay for extra storage somewhere?

        I've got gmail and it shows this at the bottom: Using 252 MB of your 7702 MB

        So 7.5GB for me, not 9.2GB!

        1. D@v3

          Re: gmail storage

          Using 299 MB of your 8457 MB for me.

          I think it differs which how much you use, mine shows 3% full, would imagine yours might show similar.

      2. Shaun 1

        Re: shook up the email market

        That's interesting, I assumed the storage level was the same for everyone. Maybe it's based on length of time you've been on there. Or maybe they just set it so you're only using about 4% of the space

    2. Schultz

      Re: shook up the email market

      "Using 4714 MB of your 10031 MB." Must be a random number generator elaborate algorithm dishing out the storage on a user per user basis. I, for one, feel very appreciated. Thanks for the headroom, algorithm!

      1. Cupboard

        Re: shook up the email market

        "Using 2181 MB of your 10240 MB"

        So how high does it go then?

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Offline requirements

    Offline access requires Chrome: https://support.google.com/drive/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2375012&p=local_offline

    Why?

    Not happy with all these tie ins, I'll give it a pass.

    1. frank ly

      Re: Offline requirements - just tried it

      It only offers offline viewing (not editing) and only for those documents you recently edited and only documents and spreadsheets (not presentations, etc).

      It only works with one account, the account you first activate it with. After that it won't play. The offline documents seem to be stored deep in some obscure chrome data files.

      Google are hoping we'll store all our data in their cloudiness so they will probably never offer folder syncing to user chosen folders on a local drive (as could be expected).

  10. frank ly
    Happy

    Rolling in it

    As an existing Hotmail user (only for 'junk' subscriptions) I got a free upgrade to 25GB of Skydrive storage on BOTH of my separate Hotmail accounts. I'll now stroll over to Google and see what's happening to my two Google accounts.

    Maybe my free Dropbox account and my free Sugarsync account will be upgraded as a response to all this too. I've no idea what I'll do with all this cloudy goodness.

    1. Shaun 1

      Re: Rolling in it

      Aye, I'm happy with my 25GB on SkyDrive, and all the photos I take with my Windows Phone are automatically synced with it

  11. Mr Curnudgeon
    Meh

    Meh

    I've got a free 25GB on SkyDrive, don't need to pay for it on G-Drive.

    1. Ben Boyle
      Thumb Up

      Re: Meh

      Yup, and my educational SkyDrive account just got a bump to 7GB so I won't be jumping ship just yet

  12. Cliff

    Too little too late

    A few years back they'd have taken the whole market - but with offerings like sugarsync providing not just web backup not just single root folder sync like dropbox, simpler to set up than spideroak, Google could really hit a home run by emulating their model and crushing the competition

  13. Tony Paulazzo
    Gimp

    Any British based cloud storage? I don't care so much what Google see's, but fuck the American governments raping my data.

    1. Silverburn
      Gimp

      Indeed. For those not familiar with this, i think he is referring to:

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriot_Act

      Got confidential data? Don't go near US infrastructure.

      1. g e

        Yeah but

        it's not like uk.gov won't gleefully play the bend-over game when the NSA/DHS/CIA sends them a sniffy email.

        Other EU states might tell them to walk, perhaps. If you don't want yer data given a proctological by The State then keep it off the interwebs entirely.

  14. Cupboard
    Facepalm

    So they're giving us less storage than GMail, for a service that is likely to need more.

    Erm?

  15. Bassey

    Bit Limited

    It all looks a bit limited. It is really a shame they have gone with the crappy Dropbox model. Having to move all the stuff you want to sync into the "sync" folder is just crap. You end up duplicating stuff all over the place when the general idea of cloudy sync is to make life easier and avoid ending up with multiple, out of sync copies of things. I really don't understand why all these services don't just allow the user to choose what they want to sync from their current hard drive. I've been using SugarSync for longer than I can remember and, whilst a bit more expensive than Google Drive, it seems like a lot less hassle - especially given that the early interest in Drive seems to have brought down all their servers. I'm getting no response from Drive or the webpage!

    1. earlyjester

      Re: Bit Limited

      Mmmm symbolic links oh hang on, no Linux version.

      Symbolic links work great on my ubuntu machines with dropbox no duplication duplication at all

      1. Audrey S. Thackeray

        Re: Bit Limited

        "no duplication duplication at all"

        That made me chuckle.

        Oh, and in case it's helpful, Windows does symbolic links.

  16. Omnisis

    LiveDrive? That's Uk based I think - registered office is London address...

  17. This post has been deleted by its author

  18. Sorry that handle is already taken. Silver badge

    Google Drive Logo ≈ Recycling Symbol

    Yesssss

  19. jai

    no thanks

    am just a little too worried about Google having an off day and suddenly everyone's private files show up in public searches and so on. think i'll stick to keeping my files local, thanks all the same

  20. Jim 48
    WTF?

    Picasa

    I paid to have extra space specifically for my Picasa ($5/year) and according to the new storage plans document (http://support.google.com/drive/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=39567&p=butter_old_storage) I should be able to keep this plan BUT "If your account lapses, your credit card is declined, or you choose to change your storage plan in any way (upgrade or downgrade), you’ll be switched to the new Google storage plan.". I am NOT paying around $30/year for a similar allocation.

    My Picasa currently shows I have 21GB available whilst Drive says I have 25600Mb.

  21. Boris Winkle
    FAIL

    Ok...

    Just signed in and was greeted with this:

    Google Drive sta arrivando.

    Vuoi sapere quando sarà pronto il tuo Google Drive? Se sei interessato, ti invieremo un'email all'indirizzo ***********@gmail.com non appena sarà

    TRANSLATED:

    Google Drive is coming.

    Want to know when he's ready your Google Drive? If you are interested, please send an email to *********** @ gmail.com as soon as

    I'm a Skydrive and dropbox user anyway... So no biggie

  22. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    This ought to have people seriously worried...

    Check out the comparison of google TOS vs. Dropbox et. al.: http://t.co/c0X0W6Ed

  23. Rich_Herds_Cats
    Linux

    Can be done on linux

    http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/04/how-to-access-google-drive-via-nautilus-in-ubuntu/

  24. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Google Drive T&T

    Here's a quote from Google Drive T&T, from a link provided above, in full glory:

    "You retain ownership of any intellectual property rights that you hold in that content. In short, what belongs to you stays yours"

    now the good part. Put down that tea or coffee mug first.

    "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."

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Google Drive T&T

      I am Jack's complete lack of surprise...

      But seriously, if you're not encrypting before storing stuff on the cloud you... are a FaceTwit user????

  25. Sir Adam-All

    eh ...

    whats this waiting list bollocks ??

    how come some people have one now, but others have to wait ?

  26. This post has been deleted by its author

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