Interesting... they are not just going after Dropbox with Google Drive, but also Evernote.
"Search by keyword and filter by file type, owner and more. Drive can even recognize text in scanned documents using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology."
Is OCR really the feature that makes Evernote a popular product? I don't use it, but I have seen people use it, and it looks more like a notebook that syncs across all your devices. There is little notion of "files". I can't imagine this will have much effect on Evernote.
Earth has many features that Maps don't. When is the time you tried Earth? Viewing old imagery, the flightsim, more layers, it even has street view integration now.
There is a Google Docs API[1] that allows you to upload and download arbitrary files from Google Docs; depending on exactly how the Docs / Drive integration works, that might allow you to write a desktop Google Drive client.
It's really awful that companies such as Box, Google etc are not supporting the Linux desktop, especially seeing as desktop linux is actually a really attractive option right now - better memory management than OSX and installable on pretty much any device, and Windows is pretty much a joke for non-.NET development or unless you game.
Fuck, their Android platform is based on Linux yet they don't support Linux desktop? That's pretty shitty.
Not having a Drive client for Linux (yet) doesn't mean Google as a company does not support Linux at all. For example, Chrome is supported on Linux. We don't know - Drive for Linux may come further down the line. The reality is that a relatively small fraction of consumers use Linux at home or work. If I were releasing a new product, Linux wouldn't be one of my top priorities either.
Agreed, but the "techie" crowd tend to be the early adopters for products like this and help drive others to use them. It's not totally crazy of Google not to support Linux out of the gate (for the reasons you and others noted) but it is a little surprising, nonetheless.
I completely agree, huge company, huge resources, lotsa money. With all that, making a Linux client would be super easy, any highschool kid can go ahead and just build it, but with their resources, they can make a just-as-good Linux client very easily.
Damn, this pisses me off, seems like a great product I just can't use. Ubuntu One and Dropbox seem like the best alternatives now.
Also, Google Earth on Linux is indeed a joke, I think it's Wine.
"any highschool kid can go ahead and just build it"
What high school did you go to where everyone was an expert on multithreading, network io, disk io, bidirectional synchronization, and state persistence?
Seems like inherently, they have always been going after Dropbox, Evernote, whatever. It's the very nature of the overarching idea of Google Docs. Everything is a doc. And all these 'features' are natural parts of the system.
That is incorrect, you are looking at the old Google account storage costs. These are different and may supersede the old pricing.
You can get started with 5GB of storage for free—that’s enough to store the high-res photos of your trip to the Mt. Everest, scanned copies of your grandparents’ love letters or a career’s worth of business proposals, and still have space for the novel you’re working on. You can choose to upgrade to 25GB for $2.49/month, 100GB for $4.99/month or even 1TB for $49.99/month. When you upgrade to a paid account, your Gmail account storage will also expand to 25GB.
(pseudo-edit while typing) I think I found it: http://cl.ly/0d3r3F1343132g131y36 (notice down at the bottom) though all the 'learn more' links just take me to the essentially-useless help home-page, rather than to a place where I could actually learn more.
What do you get if you go to my first link? Might there be time to grandfather in a better plan?
Actual edit: woah - it just started redirecting me to the more expensive option (hasn't been for the past 1/2 hour). wtf.
I went to the drive page, it said sign up top right and I clicked it and it quoted the extremely cheap yearly figures. The button is no longer there, I guess they are amending it as we speak.
In my mind, two factor authentification is a killer feature here. Now if they can also have password-protected link sharing, this will be a much better choice for small businesses or privacy-minded individuals.
Do they actually have 2-factor authentication, though? The French translation seemed to include it, but I don't see any mention of it here.
Edit: Yep, it does have it. Interesting that they don't mention it anywhere in the blog post or on the official site - you'd think it'd be a selling point compared to Dropbox.
Obviously two-factor is good (though strong passwords and discipline are really no worse for personal use). But I don't think "privacy-minded individuals" are going to be heavy users of cloud storage.
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.
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
But in the blogpost it says:"You can choose to upgrade to 25GB for $2.49/month, 100GB for $4.99/month or even 1TB for $49.99/month"
Yeah. I got all excited at the idea of paying $50/year for 200GB. The actual prices are still much cheaper than Dropbox, but not quite as radical as it first seemed.
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
'''
When I following the link you posted I get the new pricing page. It is just taking them awhile to propagate the stuff to all their servers. Give it another ten-twenty min and try again.
But that's an API for chrome apps. You couldn't write a linux-based sync client, or FUSE mount, etc... Basically Linux users have access to the ecosystem of online apps, but not access to the files in the native filesystem (one of the things that makes Dropbox such a killer app). Frustrating.
Yeah, reading further that might be the case. My initial scan said that the apps had to be present in the chrome market and approved. But the REST API looks like it just authenticates via OAuth and does the I/O directly by the client (FWIW: the OAuth authentication would be an annoying step for a background FUSE daemon, but not insoluble). I don't know which is correct.
It sounds like it is more of a competitor in spirit to iCloud, not Dropbox (though, obviously, Dropbox lacking those deeper integrations is troubling...).
100gb for $5/mo going to hurt Dropbox's margins...
Not too surprising gDrive doesn't have iOS support quite yet...
I think this shows a massive change in direction with Google in the last years, when GMail was introduced it came with that "Holy shit that is a lot of space" while every other webmail was offering 10-500MB accounts, they came with BOOM! 5GB and growing.
Now they are simply matching the competition with the same features with the "..but it's from Google" attached to it, which is similar to what Microsoft did with Hotmail after Gmail exploded.
Ninja edit*: talking about the entry plan (free)
One might argue that you do that when you need new users (they don't), but it becomes more reactive than innovative in the end.
And here I thought they got their self-driving car productified..especially with a title like that. Imagine my disappointment when its just another "dropbox"
hmmm, hmmm .. "Posted by Sundar Pichai" - isn't that the guy who convinced Googles top management in 2008 to kill - the ready for launch - GDrive because files are "deprecated", "ungoogly" and a "thing of the past" (according to steven levys book "in the plex") - wonder what changed since then (DropBox? Evernote? ...)
>what do you think all those involved were doing in the last 4 years?
well my sarcastic self suggests: 3 1/2 years of those 4 years probably: google wave, google buzz, google search wiki, google site annotations, google knol and - not to forget - google plus
Well, this pretty much exhausts the pool of people who don't care for the data privacy. On the plus side, those who do want privacy are still waiting for a proper solution, and it is an opportunity.
(edit) It is really shocking how absolutely mind-bogglingly ignorant people are when it comes to their data privacy matters. How could any business person in a sane state of mind choose to share its data with some 3rd party company. Business plans, emails, everything. And Google actively promoting such behavior and endorsing ignorance - this goes well beyond "evil." It is one of the greatest disservices to the state of the digital culture of our times. So, yeah, great to see more of the same. Yay to the gDrive!
What are you talking about? Users have complete control over who they share their documents with in Drive. How is it 'evil' to provider a better UI for what people can already do (email documents to one another)?
Err... He is talking about Google having access to your files, not whoever else you choose to share them with.
Any company that deals with sensitive data probably already does not use any sharing service. If necessary you could write a custom sync app that encrypts on upload to gDrive and decrypts on download. I have worked for a company that had implemented automatic encryption on emails, including attachments (at least with it's largest clients).
Thanks camiller, I misread the post I was replying to.
In that case, my response is that that sounds awfully paranoid. Earning and maintaining our users' trust is far more valuable to us than stealing some hypothetical secret business data that someone has stored in Drive, and new engineering employees (like myself) go through extensive privacy training to ensure we don't/can't do anything that would be a breach of our privacy policy. As it turns out Googlers have the same concerns about privacy as everyone else here, and we design all of our user-data storage systems with privacy as a key design goal.
it's evil what they'll do with your files. one likely step is fishing expeditions by ICE looking for people who have illegal copies of movies or songs on their gdrive.
It is really shocking how absolutely mind-bogglingly ignorant people are when it comes to online privacy matters.
A side note, but it's shocking how people are unable to believe that others are capable of making informed choices. Case in point: I use Facebook. I often get people hounding me- "don't you care about privacy?!?", "Facebook is using your data!"
Yeah, I know. I don't mind. The way I see it, privacy is the new currency- Facebook isn't providing me with a free service, I am paying for the service in the form of targeted advertising. And I am OK with that.
And to go back on topic...
How could any business person in a sane state of mind choose to share its data with some 3rd party company.
Because it's very difficult not to? I have a database on AWS- Amazon has access to that. Doing anything else would be very expensive. Even if I get my own server, whatever telco provider I use for the connection could easily sniff through my data if they wanted to.
You using Facebook is not a problem, because it doesn't affect me. However if you decide to use GMail or GA or Google Fonts or gWhatever, then it forces me into the picture and I really do not appreciate it.
How would you feel if a private company would give away free surveillance cameras to the store operators in return for telling them how many people walked through their doors? Or how would you like your real-estate agent CC'ing all your house purchase documents to a fax service hosted in another country just because it got to fax you for free? This is the state of ignorance that I am talking about. It all starts rather innocently with using gDrive to store some photos, but then bit by bit it weasels its way in and establishes new "privacy norms", where apparently privacy is a new currency - jeez, are you serious? Really? You would let someone observe you taking a shit in return for a free roll of tissue paper? This is wrong. The fact it's an established practice doesn't make it any more right, leave alone ethical. Sober up.
> You would let someone observe you taking a shit in return for a free roll of tissue paper? This is wrong.
Holy slippery slope, Batman! There are plenty of reasonable arguments against Facebook, Gmail, etc etc. You went straight past all of them into tinfoil-hat territory without a second glance.
Arguments about surveillance cameras, free toilet paper, and other nonsense have absolutely no place in discussions about privacy on the web. None.
Man, I totally agree with you! That state of ignorance you are talking about reminds me of Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)... that is (almost) what is happening nowadays.
And I am literally laughing out loud with the 'taking a shit' thing. =)
You're OK with targeted advertising, but you're probably not OK with any number of other things Facebook and others may one day do with your personal information. Or if _you_ are, I think many, many people are not. They use Facebook because it's a great product that all their friends use.
If privacy is a new currency, you certainly don't get to set the exchange rate.
The problem is not when Facebook sends you targeted ads. It is when third parties access your information to target you in other ways.
Think of the Girls Around Me app. Or employers who want to look at people's FB. Or governments who want to spy on their own people. (Anyone who thinks that the USA doesn't should look at the history of the FBI. And you'd be amazed what can get twisted out of shape during lawsuits.) The 21st century has not had any serious demonstrations of how this can be abused. But it is just a question of time.
And that's just generic. Consider for a moment a spear phishing attack. I am trying to attack target company X. I find all of the FB accounts that I can for employees of X. I then find all of their friends. I now target their presumably less careful friends, and when I find one I then send a targeted phishing attack at the person I really want from their friend. (I do something like promise vacation photos, and then show what appears to be an internal server error, but actually is a malicious page. The target gets compromised, thinks it is a bad URL, moves on...)
Girls Around Me was a Foursquare app. And in any case, it only used public information. Facebook offers finely grained privacy controls that allow you to control what third parties can and cannot access- they do a far better job of it than Apple and Google do, IMO.
Obviously, illegitimate access is an entirely different topic.
My understanding was that Girls Around Me used Foursquare to identify people, then connected to Facebook for information such as pictures, interests, etc.
And yes, it "only" used public information. But Facebook has pushed people to make more public than they would really be comfortable being known by the creep who is trying to figure out the right pickup strategy to use.
Hundreds of thousands of apps on App Store and Android Market says you're wrong. It's true that many of them require an online account, but many don't. Excluding that, there's still lots of free software.
I have been looking (for years) for a "good" online storage/sync solution that allows me to store my documents using my own private key. TrueCrypt etc don't reach the "set it, and forget it" level.
But when you think about how much more expensive storing those documents will be for these companies (as each copy of the same document will be encrypted with a separate private key), and how much value these companies will miss out on because they won't be able to scan our documents, it's understandable why I may never find such a solution.
Provides a pain-free encrypted layer on top of free cloud storage services like DropBox. BoxCryptor encrypts individual files, then stores the encrypted files in DropBox. If your DropBox account is compromised the adversary will only get useless encrypted files. Uses EncFS. Has clients for Windows and Mac. The Android and iOS clients are amazing.
To me, the most surprising thing about BoxCryptor is that it's easier to use than DropBox--not an easy feat.
And if someone were working on this (or hoping to) how could they reach you to let you know about a beta/alpha? (genuine question, I've been thinking about something similar).
Not sure if it's exactly what you're looking for but you could consider tarsnap.com, which is an online storage company heavily focused on user security/privacy. It's been around for many years now and is run by HN's cperciva (IIRC), who seems to be quite knowledgeable with all things security.
Pretty much ANY online service that provides sync has decided not to use private keys. The same goes also with tasklist apps. They are either only web-based (and obviously readable at the server) or use the sync without encryption to provide web access. http://timegt.com is using private key for encrypting sync data but it came with the cost of not having any web access to your tasks!
The same with dropbox etc, private key encryption renders any server-side magic like web access very complex.
> How could any business person in a sane state of mind choose to share its data with some 3rd party company.
Every company has to share its data somehow. You probably aren't your own ISP, or web host, or even land lord. Your company's health insurance provider knows all of your employees and even which ones are sick. Your employees likely have information on their phones and laptops about your company. Etc etc.
Google Apps (when you pay for it) comes with serious privacy agreements and certifications. Enough for government use even. Unless you have an amazingly competent team, I'd trust that Google is able to keep your data more secure than you are.
Not to mention proper support for two-factor authentication, which most smaller email systems don't have (especially in-house corporate setups.) Shared services can devote more resources to security because they're splitting the result over a greater number of users.
RSA has been selling such systems for years. My friend's container shipping company of 15 people has it. It really comes down to having a qualified IT person on board, rather than the availability of a technical solution.
I'd still bet on Google's security setup for its Apps customers over your friend's company. Also a consideration, Google would cost only $900 a year for 15 users, which is a considerable savings over dedicated staff.
I recommend Google Apps all the time. It's almost certainly better than what they're using now and is very good at not having problems.
There's no question such solutions have been available, but the reality is that most companies haven't implemented them.
Even if a company is aware of TFA, it's still probably cheaper and faster to get it via Google's products than implement a solution in-house using RSA, etc.
To be blunt when I tried SpiderOak I found your client to be clunky, ugly, and a bit confusing to setup. One of Dropbox's best features and the reason it appeals to the mass market is that their client is the best. It's fast, light, and easy to use.
Actually, what continues to shock me is the level of sanctimony achieved by online privacy advocates. You willfully ignore the benefits of data sharing and cloud services, benefits embraced by millions of people and corporations every day, resulting in massive savings of time and money. You assume that everyone who stores anything online is "ignorant" of the ramifications, whereas in reality they are making an informed economic decision. Really the only ignorance I see here is when people issue frothy prophecies of a digital doomsday like this one, simply because the prevailing trend runs counter to their own personal philosophy.
I'd really hate to be in Google's position. Really hate. They make a ton of services that are near universal, not due to lockin, not due to any other anticompetitive shenanigans, but because they're good and people want to use them.
And meanwhile with every product launch, 90% of the internet using public is rightly excited, 9 % are meh, and the remaining one percent are "zOMG GOOGLE IS EVIL! HOW DARE THEY MAKE A SERVICE THAT PEOPLE WILL WANT TO WILLINGLY USE! AND CAN EASILY MOVE DATA IN AND OUT OF!"
Some of you have a shockingly broad and absurd definition of "evil".
If there's something I absolutely don't want to be read, I'll upload a truecrypt volume. Problem solved, sans chicken-little-esque complaints.
I don't agree with the mentality that you're commenting on, but I can somewhat see where they're coming from. One way to think of it is to see all services as a mousetrap where the powers that be can snap the trap if they like, and fuck over a lot of mice (by betraying privacy).
Google may make really great services, but to people who view these highly-integrated services as potential mousetraps, it's just an irresistibly-gilded moustrap. It may be amazing, but it just means it's luring more people in to be snapped in the trap.
And I imagine you can become one of those people by being burned on privacy concerns, or by being pre-emptively vigilant regarding your privacy. There's been all kinds of news of services that have betrayed privacy in one way or another, so it's not totally far-fetched.
You just described every business. People don't have perfect knowledge.
Thank you for trying to raise awareness over an admittedly important issue.
But calling this "evil" is absurd.
Go yell at people convincing college kids to sign up for credit cards or buy magazines by handing out T-shirts and movie passes.
For comparison: The phone companies know about every phone call you make. That's a wealth of information. They're exploiting people's ignorance to get it...
The credit card companies know about every purchase you make. Why would a company ever let another company know everything about all of their purchases?
ADP knows how much you pay all of your employees!!!
When your hard drive "fails," the guy from HP and Dell could be copying all of your data, not just "servicing" your computer!!!
Look no further than your government. Frankly, you may be better served encouraging the use of encryption, because, sadly, I could probably convince myself that Google can be trusted to lobby for my rights/privacy more/better than my governments prying eye would lobby to take them away.
However, awareness of encrypting important data and not using online-social tools is the alternative.
>it's with them exploiting people's ignorance to get it.
How are they exploiting any kind of ignorance? What is the average GDrive user unaware of that Google is somehow evil for not disclosing in large, red, 52pt Impact?
And I quoted you saying "evil" because it's the relevant portion that I was responding to. You could have gone with "Hmm, cloud storage has a few drawbacks..." but no, you went full derp.
The same way a plumber is "exploiting" your ignorance. You don't know how to or have the tools to replace your kitchen sink p-trap... that is you are ignorant in this case. In step s the business with the tools and knowledge- or technology if you will...
You can't build your own gdrive or have the tools too (or the curve to do so is too steep). In steps google.
I disagree with the word "exploit" in this case. Maybe "capitalizing" on your ignorance. That's what a successful business does- capitalizes on prevalent ignorance- of process, or tools, or what-have-you- and makes a business model out of it.
I get ostracised IRL for saying things like that, and downvoted to oblivion in the net.
I'm glad to see your comment is doing ok. Good sign?
I remember the 90s when most people wouldn't even buy online because they were asked stuff like credit card numbers or just personal information. Group dynamics really are an incredible thing.
"How could any business person in a sane state of mind choose to share its data with some 3rd party company"
How many businesses actually own dark fiber and use it for 100% of electronic communications? Unless you're DoD, you're most likely choosing to share your data with some 3rd party company. And if you are DoD, you're so big that you may as well be.
Businesses have been carrying information through AT&T, the U.S. Mail, couriers, Western Union, etc. for decades without batting an eye. Why should Google and Facebook be different?
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.
The main difference I can see is that insync creates MS file formats when it syncs (.xls, .doc etc) whilst GDrive creates .gsheet, .gdoc files which for me just open Google Docs in Chrome.
Interesting difference. Google's approach isn't very good for interoperability.
edit: and incidentally insync has failed to comprehend me moving a stack of files into a folder and instead created duplicates. Syncing is a hard problem with lots of edge cases (and on that note Chrome bookmark sync deleted 5 years of bookmarks)
Do not expect any consistency from Sundar Pichai. He told a group of engineers to focus exclusively on a product, only to shut down their office 6 months later.
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.
It is bad if they are launching a product from 2008, or launching a product that conceivably could have been done in 2008. If they were doing a dropbox clone they're four years behind, but as an above commenter mentioned, they aren't. I actually think this is a really good opportunity for Google to achieve their social ambitions. Rather than try to fight Facebook on their home turf Google can try to coalesce gmail/google plus/google docs/google drive into a kind of operating system replacement and build their social network around it, like a giant collaborative computing system. Time will tell though, superficially it looks like a lame google docs relaunch.
Is there continuity with previous Google Drive products?
Pichai: What Scott’s talking about, Google Drive as an evolution of Docs, is one thing. Early on, we had a project called Google Drive that was completely different.
What was different?
Pichai: There was a very traditional file system approach, a long time ago, having nothing to do with Google Docs. It was pre-mobile, pre-tablet, with deep integration into My Documents and Windows, et cetera. So it was very different.
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 do things like send faxes, edit videos and create website mockups directly from Drive. To install these apps, visit the Chrome Web Store—and look out for even more useful apps in the future."
Specifically the app integration ecosystem they're creating with the Chrome Web Store is extremely interesting. There's documentation for developers here:
Basically, you register your app against certain mime types, and then when users install your app into Chrome, they can now open those file types directly from Drive using your app, seamlessly.
It's Windows' "open with" dialogue, except on the Web. That's a big deal, because while everyone expected Drive to offer features that compete with Dropbox, this feature competes with operating systems. I think it's a brilliant move that shows Google thinking ahead and beyond what Dropbox is doing.
I'm really looking forward to see this because the few apps that used Dropbox for this where brilliant, for example CineXplayer on iOS to store videos.
"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.
Yes, but that's not really what concerns me. It's that my workflow runs through those services.
To clarify, email (basically your identity online), calendars, device syncing, now file-sharing can be run through Google (and I'm sure a whole lot of other things too). If these were to disappear* I'd basically be left with a nice shiny box, where I could 'work' but in a much more limited way. It would feel like being on a digital desert island (e.g. I do this now by working in places that don't have wireless and letting things 'sync' when I'm back online).
I guess I'm just wondering how few companies are in a position to offer services like these, resulting in Google getting all my stuff. It's not bad per se but it is making me wonder what my options really are.
(edits for clarity)
*I'm referring to the odd story of people getting locked out of google accounts. I know it's rare.
You can have some degree of peace of mind by using your own domain (it's very easy to set up in gmail). This way, if google ever decides to f*ck you, at least you can set up your own mail server (better than having your life ruined, depending on how important your email address is for you) and move on.
People get hacked and/or locked out of accounts surprisingly often. A good (and tech-savvy friend) was recently hacked, and managed to get thousands of dollars transferred before found it.
PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, if you have a Gmail account please follow Jeff Atwood's directions below. Turn on two-factor authentication, make sure you've verified a phone number and recovery email address account.
Suppose you turn on two factor authentication, and then something happens to the phone number you used for it. Does that mean you've effectively lost your Gmail account? (Not a rhetorical question. I don't know how or whether you can lose a cell phone number - as opposed to just the physical phone, which presumably shouldn't be a problem - but that doesn't necessarily mean it can't happen.)
The two-factor auth system does not use the phone as a phone, just as a hardware token. Google displays a token on the login screen, you enter this in your phone and type the code it gives you in to the login page (similar to RSA's SecurID, but your phone is the device).
You seem to be referring to some othet Google auth system. The two-factor system used for Google accounts sends a code via SMS that you need to enter on the web page. It does not make you enter something on your phone.
There is an google authenticator app for android that you can register with your two factor auth so you can just open the app rather than wait for the text message.
Ah, I see. Yes, looks like Google offers multiple phone-based two-factor systems. I was referring to the oAuth one, which uses time-based tokens rather than sending the code via SMS.
I see. But does that qualify as a two-factor auth? You need two independent "factors" for that, and while OAuth uses tokens internally, all it does is ensure a secure transport between Google's servers and the app that requests authorization. It doesn't actually obtain two different things from the user.
No, that's not exactly what he means. The "token" isn't the OAuth native token, it's a 6-digit code that is based on the current time and a device secret embedded in the app on your phone.
What you are referring to isn't part of the OAuth spec, as far as I know, is it something particular to Google's API?
The cached access token could also be considered a factor, although it depends on the token expiry policy. If the token doesn't require a refresh using a refresh token (which must prompt a password) often enough its security is compromised.
I don't know what kind of expiry Google's OAuth token has, but last time I tested this, it was a very long time. I believe Twitter's live forever. Facebook's offline access scope (which you will need for a normal app) lives forever until the user changes his/her password (see http://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/2011/05/13/how-to--...).
In my experience two factor auth sends a a text message to the provided phone number with a code which you then enter on screen so retaining control of the number is a requirement.
In regular use, you enter a code from an app, rather than using any network features of the phone. You can also set up (either as default or as backup) a phone number to text with a code -- as backup, they recommend sending to someone else's phone.
Lastly, they will give you a list of ten one-time-use codes which you can write down or print out and put in your wallet/safe.
If all the above fail, I believe there's an account recovery procedure, which takes a couple of days and involves sending proof of ID.
So you're not relying on a single device, and certainly not on a single phone number, to be able to retain your account.
You can set up an alternative number, and can also print out a bunch of one-time use codes. One of these methods should be enough to log in and change the settings.
The amount of time I have been unable to access something because of a Google outage is much much lower than the amount of time I have been unable to access something because I lost my flash drive, left my laptop at home, etc.
Is there even evidence of Google really verifiably loosing any user data? If not, considering the amount of data they handle, they can probably be considered the best at not loosing data, from a bayesian point of view.
well, have you thought about how much "self serve IT" works for average consumers before cloud based services? for ex. can you aunt download and configure a mail client, or does she just have an @yahoo
There's a business opportunity out there for someone to build a "Google Backup" tool. It would synch your G-drive to Dropbox, your Gmail to yahoo mail, and so on. Marketed as "in case they turn evil" and intended people like you (and me!) who have this concern.
The company would become useless if Google ever fixed their customer service problems ("they closed my account and wouldn't say why!"), but Google has demonstrated they WON'T fix that.
It's not strictly an apples/apples comparison, but there are several apps like Spanning Backup(1) on the GApps Marketplace that offer whole-account backup.
Does any of the cloud competitors already offer a similar api that would let my app users use their infra instead of mine? Or associate my app into their ui? Or is this a novel from google?
Windows 8 and Skydrive has a similar concept built into it called contracts. Developers can integrate their app to work with Windows 8's UI. For example you can search your Flikr or Facebook directly in the OS in the same way that you search the file system.
> Basically, you register your app against certain mime types, and then when users install your app into Chrome, they can now open those file types directly from Drive using your app, seamlessly.
It took a minute for it to hit me how brilliant that is. I'm really interested if webgl developers will do anything interesting with this.
BUT will the experience be seamless and actually replicate a proper file system, OR the current experience of having files on the web (Box, DropBox, SkyDrive) and not being able to attach/read/edit files. Currently you need native integration with these online services in iOS. When will they actually be web based file systems, universally accessible via API?
I am sorry, but skydrive has basically ms office build in. you can easily create/edit files. although it is obviously not the complete office suite, it is definitely very decent.
Sure, and I love that SkyDrive is built into office... but accessing those files on the go, or with any other programme is a nightmare. What do I do with my other files? Spread them across different services?
IF Office comes to iOS, THAT will be a game-changer. And I don't mean the lame Windows Phone 7 implementation. I would EVEN be happy with Office from Windows 3.1!
It's kind of disingenuous for them to call it an "open platform" when the only way to get API access is to distribute your app through the Chrome Web Store. What if I want to build something that works on multiple browsers? Am I just out of luck?
You actually can get access to these apps in other browsers through the Chrome Web Store. Try adding any of the Drive enabled apps. The experience is a little odd right now, but it works.
But the important thing is that there's no reason they can't. Google's release partners understandably target the browser that is used by Google fans, since they will be the early adopters.
So long as this is a temporary situation, which I think it is, I wouldn't be worried.
Some more thoughts on where this could go in the future:
This whole thing is great for Chrome OS and Chromebooks. Right now, using a Chromebook is an experience that comes with a lot of sacrifice. You can't really do much with a lot of the files that you're used to using on Windows. You're locked to a browser UI that limits your flexibility.
But with the upcoming new Aura UI and Google Drive, suddenly you've now got an experience very similar to Windows. You have a desktop that you can put apps on, and you can open arbitrary files using any app that supports it and is available in the store. Now the distance between Windows and Chrome OS is suddenly very small relative to how large it was last year.
This makes me very excited to find out what Google plans to talk about at Google I/O. I wouldn't be surprised if they introduced a new Chromebook model built around the coming together of the new UI and Drive.
For anyone wondering when this will come out for Apps:
A Google Apps version of Google Drive will arrive for
Google Apps admins on the rapid-release track "over the
next few weeks," Google said; it'll also include 5GB free
but monthly prices beyond that will be somewhat more
expensive, for example $4 a month for 20GB or $89 per
month for 1TB.)
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57419024-93/google-drive-its-slick-integrated...and-not-exactly-free/
When GDrive for Apps launches, it will enable a new sort of workflow, where a user can open specified file types in GDrive with internal webapps behind a VPN. If combined with the existing Google Docs API, this could be the start of a whole new class of business process apps. Interesting.
"Starting today, Google Apps administrators will see new controls for Drive in the control panel," a Google spokeswoman said. "Users at organizations on the Rapid Release track will be able to opt-in to Drive at drive.google.com/start."
Hahah yeah, that grabbed my attention too. Last month I registered a company as an iOS developer, and there was a lot of faxing to Apple involved. It took me a while to find a working machine in the building, and figure out how to send these things...
>You can choose to upgrade to 25GB for $2.49/month, 100GB for $4.99/month or even 1TB for $49.99/month. When you upgrade to a paid account, your Gmail account storage will also expand to 25GB.
That's... odd. I'm paying $5/year to get 25gb of storage across Docs, Gmail, Picasa, and I see it also applies to Drive (just checked) (which is basically Docs anyway). Considerably less than $2.50/month. The 1TB is less than 1/2 the price listed, and there's no 100GB option at all.
Might there be pricing changes coming soon, or is this just a series of strange typos?
They're doing a lot more with the data now, so I suppose it makes sense. But I wonder how many people would choose the old option for 'dumb' storage. Currently, I would, though that may change in a few months.
The dumb storage had far better economics for the user. I love Google products and services, but my immediate impression here is that it's a total step backward for users like me who were already using some kind of local sync app (Insync, OfficSync, etc) w/ paid-extra Google storage - just for documents.
All the extras like the additional gmail space, GDrive integration with other products (but not our dumb storage) seems like ancillary stuff to sell it/lock you into the platform.
Like you, I'm interested to see how I feel about this in a few months.
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?)
The clock is ticking on Dropbox to lower their price. I'm paying $99/year for 50GB, but I'd be getting 100GB for $60/year over at Google. I'm already banging up against my 50GB limit - I may actually jump over to Google before my subscription is up just because the prices are so good.
i just need another 500mb, and i just dont need to pay another $10/m for a bunch of disk space i won't use. everyone i know already has dropbox too, so referrals are out.
Find one of the many "$100 of Adword credit free" coupons around, create an ad with your Dropbox referral link, sit back and watch your storage limit increase a couple times per hour.
I wouldn't recommend this unless you have specifically received one of these coupons at your email address. I used someone else's and my account was permanently suspended. Only after some negotiation was I able to make Google reverse the "permanent" suspension (a rarity, from what I have seen).
It wasn't hard to find one that I received myself. I've got coupons in magazines, hostgator, domain resellers... it shouldn't be too hard to come across one legitimately.
Dropbox enjoyed a near monopoly on their feature set and ease of use for a long time. Now that serious competition is showing up they're going to have to drop their ridiculous prices.
Their prices are only ridiculous because the service is quickly being commoditized. Two years ago we (or at least I) couldn't believe how cheap dropbox was for what we got.
Dropbox also screw over paying customers who use shared folders. (Yes I complained, but they kept explaining it was for freeloaders repeatedly ignoring "paying")
If for example you and someone else both pay Dropbox for 50GB each - ie Dropbox is being paid for 100GB of unique storage - and then you share some folders they deduct their space from your quota. As an example if they share 20GB of folders with you then you'll only be able to have 30GB of your own unique storage and between the two of you there will only be 80GB of unique storage.
Do paid sharing with a few more people and you'll quickly be out of space.
Ugh, really? I use Dropbox for personal photos, as well as a shared space for some work stuff. I thought that it only counted against one of the users.
They are absolutely right about how shared folders could be abused by non-paying customers. For example you could create ten dummy free accounts and make them all share with your account, and then have lots of storage. That is why they count your own and shared for free accounts.
But they do the same counting for paid accounts even when all parties involved are paying. No amount of discussion with support would get them to even acknowledge the issue. If you go into your account settings you'll see the bar graph and details of how shared files are being counted against you.
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.
> Why would Google - or any other company for that matter - spend time and money on something as complicated and error-prone like that?
This is a problem of technology. These tend to go away over time (e.g. Youtube's automatic copyrighted content detection). Bottom line is that the ethics and policies of the underlying company make me question the privacy of my data from the get-go.
Working with select third-party developers does not make something an open platform. A documented API makes something an open platform. Even a command-line client for a popular web-server operating system makes something an open platform. Google Drive is not an open platform yet.
That's an android app API. See andrenotgiant's comment (sibling to yours) that links to a REST API. What I have in mind is letting people export photos into a folder to populate a photojournal, as I'm already doing with Dropbox.
[EDIT] Looking deeper I see they're the same API. [/EDIT]
It's a good thing I read HN. From the Google announcement alone I would not be aware of either API.
521 comments
[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 313 ms ] thread"Search by keyword and filter by file type, owner and more. Drive can even recognize text in scanned documents using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology."
This way I have one place to store both typed and scanned stuff, and it gets me close to paperless at home.
before it was: "show us what you search for, and we will serve you relevant ads".
now it will be: "just store your files with us, and we will know what ads to serve you around the internet".
"You can install Drive on your Mac or PC"
Of course, if this pushes Dropbox to add more (useful) features and/or drop their price, that's cool too.
(iCloud to FUSE would be cool, too)
[1] https://developers.google.com/google-apps/documents-list/
It's really awful that companies such as Box, Google etc are not supporting the Linux desktop, especially seeing as desktop linux is actually a really attractive option right now - better memory management than OSX and installable on pretty much any device, and Windows is pretty much a joke for non-.NET development or unless you game.
Fuck, their Android platform is based on Linux yet they don't support Linux desktop? That's pretty shitty.
Think of everything Linux has done for them.
Damn, this pisses me off, seems like a great product I just can't use. Ubuntu One and Dropbox seem like the best alternatives now.
Also, Google Earth on Linux is indeed a joke, I think it's Wine.
What high school did you go to where everyone was an expert on multithreading, network io, disk io, bidirectional synchronization, and state persistence?
http://www.slashgear.com/google-drive-for-linux-incoming-252...
You can get started with 5GB of storage for free—that’s enough to store the high-res photos of your trip to the Mt. Everest, scanned copies of your grandparents’ love letters or a career’s worth of business proposals, and still have space for the novel you’re working on. You can choose to upgrade to 25GB for $2.49/month, 100GB for $4.99/month or even 1TB for $49.99/month. When you upgrade to a paid account, your Gmail account storage will also expand to 25GB.
edit: My Drive updated! You are currently using 17 MB (0%) of your 87040 MB. Should have bought more...
(pseudo-edit while typing) I think I found it: http://cl.ly/0d3r3F1343132g131y36 (notice down at the bottom) though all the 'learn more' links just take me to the essentially-useless help home-page, rather than to a place where I could actually learn more.
What do you get if you go to my first link? Might there be time to grandfather in a better plan?
Actual edit: woah - it just started redirecting me to the more expensive option (hasn't been for the past 1/2 hour). wtf.
http://support.google.com/drive/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answ...
Edit: Yep, it does have it. Interesting that they don't mention it anywhere in the blog post or on the official site - you'd think it'd be a selling point compared to Dropbox.
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
But in the blogpost it says:"You can choose to upgrade to 25GB for $2.49/month, 100GB for $4.99/month or even 1TB for $49.99/month"
They should probably get that sorted out.
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 '''
* No linux client
* Snuggle up closer with Dropbox
It sounds like it is more of a competitor in spirit to iCloud, not Dropbox (though, obviously, Dropbox lacking those deeper integrations is troubling...).
100gb for $5/mo going to hurt Dropbox's margins...
Not too surprising gDrive doesn't have iOS support quite yet...
Now they are simply matching the competition with the same features with the "..but it's from Google" attached to it, which is similar to what Microsoft did with Hotmail after Gmail exploded.
Ninja edit*: talking about the entry plan (free)
One might argue that you do that when you need new users (they don't), but it becomes more reactive than innovative in the end.
At the time, I think Hotmail offered 2MB (free). Google upped the game to 1GB.
You're on the wrong track. What's changed since then is GDrive - what do you think all those involved were doing in the last 4 years?
well my sarcastic self suggests: 3 1/2 years of those 4 years probably: google wave, google buzz, google search wiki, google site annotations, google knol and - not to forget - google plus
(edit) It is really shocking how absolutely mind-bogglingly ignorant people are when it comes to their data privacy matters. How could any business person in a sane state of mind choose to share its data with some 3rd party company. Business plans, emails, everything. And Google actively promoting such behavior and endorsing ignorance - this goes well beyond "evil." It is one of the greatest disservices to the state of the digital culture of our times. So, yeah, great to see more of the same. Yay to the gDrive!
Any company that deals with sensitive data probably already does not use any sharing service. If necessary you could write a custom sync app that encrypts on upload to gDrive and decrypts on download. I have worked for a company that had implemented automatic encryption on emails, including attachments (at least with it's largest clients).
In that case, my response is that that sounds awfully paranoid. Earning and maintaining our users' trust is far more valuable to us than stealing some hypothetical secret business data that someone has stored in Drive, and new engineering employees (like myself) go through extensive privacy training to ensure we don't/can't do anything that would be a breach of our privacy policy. As it turns out Googlers have the same concerns about privacy as everyone else here, and we design all of our user-data storage systems with privacy as a key design goal.
A side note, but it's shocking how people are unable to believe that others are capable of making informed choices. Case in point: I use Facebook. I often get people hounding me- "don't you care about privacy?!?", "Facebook is using your data!"
Yeah, I know. I don't mind. The way I see it, privacy is the new currency- Facebook isn't providing me with a free service, I am paying for the service in the form of targeted advertising. And I am OK with that.
And to go back on topic...
How could any business person in a sane state of mind choose to share its data with some 3rd party company.
Because it's very difficult not to? I have a database on AWS- Amazon has access to that. Doing anything else would be very expensive. Even if I get my own server, whatever telco provider I use for the connection could easily sniff through my data if they wanted to.
How would you feel if a private company would give away free surveillance cameras to the store operators in return for telling them how many people walked through their doors? Or how would you like your real-estate agent CC'ing all your house purchase documents to a fax service hosted in another country just because it got to fax you for free? This is the state of ignorance that I am talking about. It all starts rather innocently with using gDrive to store some photos, but then bit by bit it weasels its way in and establishes new "privacy norms", where apparently privacy is a new currency - jeez, are you serious? Really? You would let someone observe you taking a shit in return for a free roll of tissue paper? This is wrong. The fact it's an established practice doesn't make it any more right, leave alone ethical. Sober up.
Holy slippery slope, Batman! There are plenty of reasonable arguments against Facebook, Gmail, etc etc. You went straight past all of them into tinfoil-hat territory without a second glance.
Arguments about surveillance cameras, free toilet paper, and other nonsense have absolutely no place in discussions about privacy on the web. None.
And I am literally laughing out loud with the 'taking a shit' thing. =)
If privacy is a new currency, you certainly don't get to set the exchange rate.
Think of the Girls Around Me app. Or employers who want to look at people's FB. Or governments who want to spy on their own people. (Anyone who thinks that the USA doesn't should look at the history of the FBI. And you'd be amazed what can get twisted out of shape during lawsuits.) The 21st century has not had any serious demonstrations of how this can be abused. But it is just a question of time.
And that's just generic. Consider for a moment a spear phishing attack. I am trying to attack target company X. I find all of the FB accounts that I can for employees of X. I then find all of their friends. I now target their presumably less careful friends, and when I find one I then send a targeted phishing attack at the person I really want from their friend. (I do something like promise vacation photos, and then show what appears to be an internal server error, but actually is a malicious page. The target gets compromised, thinks it is a bad URL, moves on...)
Obviously, illegitimate access is an entirely different topic.
And yes, it "only" used public information. But Facebook has pushed people to make more public than they would really be comfortable being known by the creep who is trying to figure out the right pickup strategy to use.
"No incentive to explore your files." "Not selling you anything except storage space."
Pretty soon anything new you want will only be available as a service. What then?
But when you think about how much more expensive storing those documents will be for these companies (as each copy of the same document will be encrypted with a separate private key), and how much value these companies will miss out on because they won't be able to scan our documents, it's understandable why I may never find such a solution.
Provides a pain-free encrypted layer on top of free cloud storage services like DropBox. BoxCryptor encrypts individual files, then stores the encrypted files in DropBox. If your DropBox account is compromised the adversary will only get useless encrypted files. Uses EncFS. Has clients for Windows and Mac. The Android and iOS clients are amazing.
To me, the most surprising thing about BoxCryptor is that it's easier to use than DropBox--not an easy feat.
@amirmc my username at gmail.
The same with dropbox etc, private key encryption renders any server-side magic like web access very complex.
Every company has to share its data somehow. You probably aren't your own ISP, or web host, or even land lord. Your company's health insurance provider knows all of your employees and even which ones are sick. Your employees likely have information on their phones and laptops about your company. Etc etc.
Google Apps (when you pay for it) comes with serious privacy agreements and certifications. Enough for government use even. Unless you have an amazingly competent team, I'd trust that Google is able to keep your data more secure than you are.
http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/government/trust.html
I recommend Google Apps all the time. It's almost certainly better than what they're using now and is very good at not having problems.
http://www.rsa.com/node.aspx?id=3872
Even if a company is aware of TFA, it's still probably cheaper and faster to get it via Google's products than implement a solution in-house using RSA, etc.
We are Eco-system independent, offer enterprise features and focus on zero-knowledge privacy and top-tier security.
I'd really hate to be in Google's position. Really hate. They make a ton of services that are near universal, not due to lockin, not due to any other anticompetitive shenanigans, but because they're good and people want to use them.
And meanwhile with every product launch, 90% of the internet using public is rightly excited, 9 % are meh, and the remaining one percent are "zOMG GOOGLE IS EVIL! HOW DARE THEY MAKE A SERVICE THAT PEOPLE WILL WANT TO WILLINGLY USE! AND CAN EASILY MOVE DATA IN AND OUT OF!"
Some of you have a shockingly broad and absurd definition of "evil".
If there's something I absolutely don't want to be read, I'll upload a truecrypt volume. Problem solved, sans chicken-little-esque complaints.
Google may make really great services, but to people who view these highly-integrated services as potential mousetraps, it's just an irresistibly-gilded moustrap. It may be amazing, but it just means it's luring more people in to be snapped in the trap.
And I imagine you can become one of those people by being burned on privacy concerns, or by being pre-emptively vigilant regarding your privacy. There's been all kinds of news of services that have betrayed privacy in one way or another, so it's not totally far-fetched.
Thank you for trying to raise awareness over an admittedly important issue.
But calling this "evil" is absurd.
Go yell at people convincing college kids to sign up for credit cards or buy magazines by handing out T-shirts and movie passes.
For comparison: The phone companies know about every phone call you make. That's a wealth of information. They're exploiting people's ignorance to get it...
The credit card companies know about every purchase you make. Why would a company ever let another company know everything about all of their purchases?
ADP knows how much you pay all of your employees!!!
When your hard drive "fails," the guy from HP and Dell could be copying all of your data, not just "servicing" your computer!!!
However, awareness of encrypting important data and not using online-social tools is the alternative.
Gladly. Those people are assholes.
And I quoted you saying "evil" because it's the relevant portion that I was responding to. You could have gone with "Hmm, cloud storage has a few drawbacks..." but no, you went full derp.
You can't build your own gdrive or have the tools too (or the curve to do so is too steep). In steps google.
I disagree with the word "exploit" in this case. Maybe "capitalizing" on your ignorance. That's what a successful business does- capitalizes on prevalent ignorance- of process, or tools, or what-have-you- and makes a business model out of it.
I'm glad to see your comment is doing ok. Good sign?
I remember the 90s when most people wouldn't even buy online because they were asked stuff like credit card numbers or just personal information. Group dynamics really are an incredible thing.
How many businesses actually own dark fiber and use it for 100% of electronic communications? Unless you're DoD, you're most likely choosing to share your data with some 3rd party company. And if you are DoD, you're so big that you may as well be.
Businesses have been carrying information through AT&T, the U.S. Mail, couriers, Western Union, etc. for decades without batting an eye. Why should Google and Facebook be different?
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and...
Interesting difference. Google's approach isn't very good for interoperability.
edit: and incidentally insync has failed to comprehend me moving a stack of files into a folder and instead created duplicates. Syncing is a hard problem with lots of edge cases (and on that note Chrome bookmark sync deleted 5 years of bookmarks)
Is there continuity with previous Google Drive products?
Pichai: What Scott’s talking about, Google Drive as an evolution of Docs, is one thing. Early on, we had a project called Google Drive that was completely different.
What was different?
Pichai: There was a very traditional file system approach, a long time ago, having nothing to do with Google Docs. It was pre-mobile, pre-tablet, with deep integration into My Documents and Windows, et cetera. So it was very different.
[1] https://allthingsd.com/20120424/sundar-pichai-google-drive-i...
"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 do things like send faxes, edit videos and create website mockups directly from Drive. To install these apps, visit the Chrome Web Store—and look out for even more useful apps in the future."
Specifically the app integration ecosystem they're creating with the Chrome Web Store is extremely interesting. There's documentation for developers here:
https://developers.google.com/drive/
Basically, you register your app against certain mime types, and then when users install your app into Chrome, they can now open those file types directly from Drive using your app, seamlessly.
It's Windows' "open with" dialogue, except on the Web. That's a big deal, because while everyone expected Drive to offer features that compete with Dropbox, this feature competes with operating systems. I think it's a brilliant move that shows Google thinking ahead and beyond what Dropbox is doing.
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.
To clarify, email (basically your identity online), calendars, device syncing, now file-sharing can be run through Google (and I'm sure a whole lot of other things too). If these were to disappear* I'd basically be left with a nice shiny box, where I could 'work' but in a much more limited way. It would feel like being on a digital desert island (e.g. I do this now by working in places that don't have wireless and letting things 'sync' when I'm back online).
I guess I'm just wondering how few companies are in a position to offer services like these, resulting in Google getting all my stuff. It's not bad per se but it is making me wonder what my options really are.
(edits for clarity)
*I'm referring to the odd story of people getting locked out of google accounts. I know it's rare.
PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, if you have a Gmail account please follow Jeff Atwood's directions below. Turn on two-factor authentication, make sure you've verified a phone number and recovery email address account.
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/04/make-your-email-hac...
It eliminates virtually all of the easiest "threat vectors" to your Gmail account.
http://support.google.com/accounts/bin/answer.py?hl=en&a...
The cached access token could also be considered a factor, although it depends on the token expiry policy. If the token doesn't require a refresh using a refresh token (which must prompt a password) often enough its security is compromised.
I don't know what kind of expiry Google's OAuth token has, but last time I tested this, it was a very long time. I believe Twitter's live forever. Facebook's offline access scope (which you will need for a normal app) lives forever until the user changes his/her password (see http://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/2011/05/13/how-to--...).
Lastly, they will give you a list of ten one-time-use codes which you can write down or print out and put in your wallet/safe.
If all the above fail, I believe there's an account recovery procedure, which takes a couple of days and involves sending proof of ID.
So you're not relying on a single device, and certainly not on a single phone number, to be able to retain your account.
Welcome to the Navy-Marine Corps Internet!
The company would become useless if Google ever fixed their customer service problems ("they closed my account and wouldn't say why!"), but Google has demonstrated they WON'T fix that.
1. https://www.google.com/enterprise/marketplace/viewListing?pr...
Here's a video demonstration: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hesj1I_wsqI#t=12m00s
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsappdev/archive/2012/03/23/act...
We currently only support opening and saving back files but we plan to add save-as support in the next few days
It took a minute for it to hit me how brilliant that is. I'm really interested if webgl developers will do anything interesting with this.
They were writing about it in context of Chrome: http://blog.chromium.org/2011/08/connecting-web-apps-with-we...
IF Office comes to iOS, THAT will be a game-changer. And I don't mean the lame Windows Phone 7 implementation. I would EVEN be happy with Office from Windows 3.1!
So long as this is a temporary situation, which I think it is, I wouldn't be worried.
http://blog.chromium.org/2011/08/connecting-web-apps-with-we...
to me this looks just as a reaction to Apple's cloud offering, which already integrates all data for apps running in iOS.
This whole thing is great for Chrome OS and Chromebooks. Right now, using a Chromebook is an experience that comes with a lot of sacrifice. You can't really do much with a lot of the files that you're used to using on Windows. You're locked to a browser UI that limits your flexibility.
But with the upcoming new Aura UI and Google Drive, suddenly you've now got an experience very similar to Windows. You have a desktop that you can put apps on, and you can open arbitrary files using any app that supports it and is available in the store. Now the distance between Windows and Chrome OS is suddenly very small relative to how large it was last year.
This makes me very excited to find out what Google plans to talk about at Google I/O. I wouldn't be surprised if they introduced a new Chromebook model built around the coming together of the new UI and Drive.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2403464,00.asp
That's... odd. I'm paying $5/year to get 25gb of storage across Docs, Gmail, Picasa, and I see it also applies to Drive (just checked) (which is basically Docs anyway). Considerably less than $2.50/month. The 1TB is less than 1/2 the price listed, and there's no 100GB option at all.
Might there be pricing changes coming soon, or is this just a series of strange typos?
The pricing changed today. It is considerably less attractive now.
It looks like I'm grandfathered into $20/year for 80GB, but if I wanted to go up to 100GB the pricing is now $4.99/month.
All the extras like the additional gmail space, GDrive integration with other products (but not our dumb storage) seems like ancillary stuff to sell it/lock you into the platform.
Like you, I'm interested to see how I feel about this in a few months.
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?)
This is a joke. I hope most people realize that.
i just need another 500mb, and i just dont need to pay another $10/m for a bunch of disk space i won't use. everyone i know already has dropbox too, so referrals are out.
I hope the pricing of dropbox lowers soon too.
If for example you and someone else both pay Dropbox for 50GB each - ie Dropbox is being paid for 100GB of unique storage - and then you share some folders they deduct their space from your quota. As an example if they share 20GB of folders with you then you'll only be able to have 30GB of your own unique storage and between the two of you there will only be 80GB of unique storage.
Do paid sharing with a few more people and you'll quickly be out of space.
But they do the same counting for paid accounts even when all parties involved are paying. No amount of discussion with support would get them to even acknowledge the issue. If you go into your account settings you'll see the bar graph and details of how shared files are being counted against you.
I don't see why you would even consider this to be happening.
This is a problem of technology. These tend to go away over time (e.g. Youtube's automatic copyrighted content detection). Bottom line is that the ethics and policies of the underlying company make me question the privacy of my data from the get-go.
Working with select third-party developers does not make something an open platform. A documented API makes something an open platform. Even a command-line client for a popular web-server operating system makes something an open platform. Google Drive is not an open platform yet.
[EDIT] Looking deeper I see they're the same API. [/EDIT]
It's a good thing I read HN. From the Google announcement alone I would not be aware of either API.