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.
"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.
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.
> 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.
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?
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.
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?
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?
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.
[crosspost from the French translation thread - now that we have the official details, I think this comment is better discussed here.]
So the things Google Drive has that Dropbox doesn't:
* 2-factor authentication!
* Comments on files
* OCR - like Evernote, you can search against text in images (e.g. newspaper article)
* Image recognition - if you upload a pic of the Eiffel Tower, you can find it with the search term "eiffel tower"
* Web-based file viewer - 30 file types including HD video, Illustrator, Photoshop, etc.
The OCR and image recognition are going to be killer features for "normal" people. And I imagine it's something Dropbox can't easily duplicate (unlike the other features).
Then again, as a more privacy-minded technical person, the image recognition feature scares the beejezus out of me. Tagging faces on Facebook is one thing, but being able to semantically identify all contents of my images is really stepping up the creepiness quotient.
Should be interesting to see how Dropbox responds.
Creepy, but IMHO necessary. We take the ability to search text for granted; there's no reason we shouldn't be expanding the same capabilities to images if we can.
What might go wrong? (This is a test of imagination, not confidence.) Google might finally unleash GDrive and steal a lot of Dropbox's thunder (especially if this takes place before launch.)...
> I love reading old YC applications. I wonder if someday, they'll become the 21st century version of Harvard Business Review case studies.
I think an accelerator application or business plan would be better than a case study simply because case studies are often written with hindsight. The HBR makes it difficult to honestly assess what real-life people thought before making a particular decision.
Things I'd like to see before I consider using or recommending GDrive:
- A statement from Google regarding whether or not they will scan the data and files in GDrive to develop further profiling information or other data about the user
- A guarantee from Google that GDrive will not be subject to account lockout in the event of account suspension due to AdWords/AdSense algorithmic (or human) triggers. In fact, I'd want that guarantee for any Google service.
Here's what Dropbox has that Google cannot currently offer: If your work in AdSense/AdWords triggers a Google account suspension you do not loose access to your data with Dropbox.
Being that the algorithmic shutdown can happen at any time, without notice, warning or recourse, it is a far safer bet to keep your data on Dropbox, at any price.
The other guarantee you have is that Dropbox will not mine your data, email and docs to get deeper into your head and your life. Maybe Google offers this too. I don't know. I quit looking at their terms of service a while ago. I'll reserve judgement on that. I'm sure someone will tell me how this works.
In fact, Dropbox, the best come-back to GDrive might very well be to offer email and document services. I know that this might be a huge undertaking, but I am sure that there are lots of people, like myself, who have developed a serious trust issue with Google due to the way they behave on the AdWords/AdSense side of things.
This is an area ripe for an incursion simply because of what google isn't doing well: Customer Service.
As I have stated on numerous posts in the past, I have zero interest in any tool outside of Google Analytics because of the shitty approach they have to customer-no-service everywhere else. Could I use gmail and gdocs? Of course. Would I pay for that service? Certainly. Why don't I? Because I have zero interest in loosing access to my data because of some shitty algorithm, the lack of a staged approach to dealing with account issues and an even crappier non-existing customer service philosophy.
Why not have a Google account for work and one for personal use? Either way, getting locked out of Drive is pretty silly--like Dropbox you always have backups synced on your machines.
> A statement from Google regarding whether or not they will scan the data and files in GDrive to develop further profiling information or other data about the user
The privacy policy unequivocally states that they will use all your data to improve the service, which means that humans will be extremely restricted from reading your data, but the robots have free reign.
Been waiting for this one for a while. But...doesn't feel right to me.
It synced down my Google Docs files. Except it didn't. They're not, say, Excel files, which I assume the average user will expect. AFAICT they're shortcuts into Google Docs, which I didn't really need since I know where those are already, to a close-enough approximation. So now on my local drive I have two classes of spreadsheet. Real spreadsheets and links to my online spreadsheets, which kinda mirrors normal hyperlinks to online spreadsheets, so we have two classes of those now as well. I can't really predict what will happen if I download the file as Excel and put it into my Google Drive directory. I guess I'll have two files, but will my newly created Excel file be a new doc online? What will happen if I delete the local links?
Created a text file in my local drive. Waited. Nothing appeared in Docs. Right-click the file to "sync", no menu item. Right-click the directory, no menu item. Click different Docs directories. Nothing. At some point, it appeared. That's a temporary issue and can be fixed, but those details count.
Dropbox/Sugarsync feels a bit more predictable. I'll sync, that's it. I have a button I can push to make it do something predictable. Seems less magical.
File sync is a square hole. Google Docs is a round peg. Feels like the reasoning behind this is boardroom-strategy-level, not user-level.
Right now Dropbox/Sugarsync will keep my business. Earlier today I put one minute towards grandfathering a Skydrive account to 25GB free, just in case that proves useful. Hope I'm wrong and Google Drive feels more useful tomorrow.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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? ...)
Edit: Not so. You can enable the "rapid release" track for your domain by following the instructions here:
http://whatsnew.googleapps.com/choose-release-track
It may take "up to a day" for the setting to take effect, but once it does your domain's users should be able to opt into Drive right away from https://drive.google.com/start
This is very aggressive pricing from Google. With Microsoft offering 25GB for free (although for a limited time, and only to its existing users), and Google offering 100GB for $5/mo, the online storage space is finally heating up. The tight integration with Google Docs, and (in case of Microsoft) Office Web Apps, and valuable features like OCR and Image recognition means that these companies are now offering services on top of their online storage that Dropbox doesn't.
Dropbox definitely has a head-start today, but Google and Microsoft have the scale to offer better prices, existing platforms to tightly integrate their solutions with (Android and Windows), and the brand-power to pull people away from Dropbox. This may be the first time Dropbox has some real competition.
Here's one thing that bugs me; Google Drive seems to constantly use between 2 and 3% of my CPU time. That's wasteful. If I was on a laptop, this would be battery time, and on my desktop, I want those cycles to be used for distributing computing science, not random background processes that aren't supposed to be doing anything when idle.
I'm in the same boat. The the thought of installing this never crossed my mind. A few months ago I even set up my own email server on a spare Linode so I could ditch Gmail.
Not to mention, you never know when you're going to accidentally violate their TOS and get banned; the less you rely on them, the less that will hurt when it happens.
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."
I'm not sure if anybody mention this but GDrive actually does not download documents to your local machine. It just adds a json document pointing to file to edit.
This seems buggy. I created an archive subfolder and moved all my old Google docs there. This change (which presumably touches metadata only) took minutes to sync (on a fast connection) and failed on one file with this mysterious error: "Upload Error - An unknown issue has occurred."
Also: no option to disable the dock icon or turn off the hypnotic animation while files are syncing. Ugh.
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.
[+] [-] primigenus|14 years ago|reply
"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.
[+] [-] amirmc|14 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] primigenus|14 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] wdr1|14 years ago|reply
http://blog.chromium.org/2011/08/connecting-web-apps-with-we...
[+] [-] daenz|14 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] teraflop|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ramanujan|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rayhano|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] est|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vibrunazo|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Juha|14 years ago|reply
They were writing about it in context of Chrome: http://blog.chromium.org/2011/08/connecting-web-apps-with-we...
[+] [-] knes|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] magicalist|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] felixfurtak|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _k|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] coliveira|14 years ago|reply
to me this looks just as a reaction to Apple's cloud offering, which already integrates all data for apps running in iOS.
[+] [-] rkudeshi|14 years ago|reply
So the things Google Drive has that Dropbox doesn't:
* 2-factor authentication!
* Comments on files
* OCR - like Evernote, you can search against text in images (e.g. newspaper article)
* Image recognition - if you upload a pic of the Eiffel Tower, you can find it with the search term "eiffel tower"
* Web-based file viewer - 30 file types including HD video, Illustrator, Photoshop, etc.
The OCR and image recognition are going to be killer features for "normal" people. And I imagine it's something Dropbox can't easily duplicate (unlike the other features).
Then again, as a more privacy-minded technical person, the image recognition feature scares the beejezus out of me. Tagging faces on Facebook is one thing, but being able to semantically identify all contents of my images is really stepping up the creepiness quotient.
Should be interesting to see how Dropbox responds.
[+] [-] rogerbinns|14 years ago|reply
* Linux support * Headless (command line interface) * Public bug tracking and feature requests (votebox)
Unsure about these
* Shared folders
I'm struggling to come up with more.
[+] [-] ConstantineXVI|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] edw519|14 years ago|reply
From Dropbox's 2007 YC Application, http://dl.dropbox.com/u/27532820/app.html
I love reading old YC applications. I wonder if someday, they'll become the 21st century version of Harvard Business Review case studies.
[+] [-] chrisaycock|14 years ago|reply
I think an accelerator application or business plan would be better than a case study simply because case studies are often written with hindsight. The HBR makes it difficult to honestly assess what real-life people thought before making a particular decision.
[+] [-] EREFUNDO|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shek|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] revelation|14 years ago|reply
and an 'enterprise' plan that features, well, a really high price
[+] [-] villagefool|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robomartin|14 years ago|reply
- A statement from Google regarding whether or not they will scan the data and files in GDrive to develop further profiling information or other data about the user
- A guarantee from Google that GDrive will not be subject to account lockout in the event of account suspension due to AdWords/AdSense algorithmic (or human) triggers. In fact, I'd want that guarantee for any Google service.
Here's what Dropbox has that Google cannot currently offer: If your work in AdSense/AdWords triggers a Google account suspension you do not loose access to your data with Dropbox.
Being that the algorithmic shutdown can happen at any time, without notice, warning or recourse, it is a far safer bet to keep your data on Dropbox, at any price.
The other guarantee you have is that Dropbox will not mine your data, email and docs to get deeper into your head and your life. Maybe Google offers this too. I don't know. I quit looking at their terms of service a while ago. I'll reserve judgement on that. I'm sure someone will tell me how this works.
In fact, Dropbox, the best come-back to GDrive might very well be to offer email and document services. I know that this might be a huge undertaking, but I am sure that there are lots of people, like myself, who have developed a serious trust issue with Google due to the way they behave on the AdWords/AdSense side of things.
This is an area ripe for an incursion simply because of what google isn't doing well: Customer Service.
As I have stated on numerous posts in the past, I have zero interest in any tool outside of Google Analytics because of the shitty approach they have to customer-no-service everywhere else. Could I use gmail and gdocs? Of course. Would I pay for that service? Certainly. Why don't I? Because I have zero interest in loosing access to my data because of some shitty algorithm, the lack of a staged approach to dealing with account issues and an even crappier non-existing customer service philosophy.
Why I feel this way (from about a week ago): http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3804260
A thought on what could be a better system: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3804260
[+] [-] jonknee|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Drbble|14 years ago|reply
The privacy policy unequivocally states that they will use all your data to improve the service, which means that humans will be extremely restricted from reading your data, but the robots have free reign.
[+] [-] robomartin|14 years ago|reply
Why I feel this way (from about a week ago): http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3849318
[+] [-] richardw|14 years ago|reply
It synced down my Google Docs files. Except it didn't. They're not, say, Excel files, which I assume the average user will expect. AFAICT they're shortcuts into Google Docs, which I didn't really need since I know where those are already, to a close-enough approximation. So now on my local drive I have two classes of spreadsheet. Real spreadsheets and links to my online spreadsheets, which kinda mirrors normal hyperlinks to online spreadsheets, so we have two classes of those now as well. I can't really predict what will happen if I download the file as Excel and put it into my Google Drive directory. I guess I'll have two files, but will my newly created Excel file be a new doc online? What will happen if I delete the local links?
Created a text file in my local drive. Waited. Nothing appeared in Docs. Right-click the file to "sync", no menu item. Right-click the directory, no menu item. Click different Docs directories. Nothing. At some point, it appeared. That's a temporary issue and can be fixed, but those details count.
Dropbox/Sugarsync feels a bit more predictable. I'll sync, that's it. I have a button I can push to make it do something predictable. Seems less magical.
File sync is a square hole. Google Docs is a round peg. Feels like the reasoning behind this is boardroom-strategy-level, not user-level.
Right now Dropbox/Sugarsync will keep my business. Earlier today I put one minute towards grandfathering a Skydrive account to 25GB free, just in case that proves useful. Hope I'm wrong and Google Drive feels more useful tomorrow.
[+] [-] aresant|14 years ago|reply
Yesterday MSFT skydrive offered 100gb for $50/yr.
Today GOOG offers 400GB for $100/yr or 1TB for $256/yr.
As a consumer with "offsite backup" in mind, there doesn't seem to be an inherently high switching cost to move services away from DropBox.
As a result I think that they're going to need to reassess pricing strategy within the year.
ref: Goog pricing https://accounts.google.com/b/0/PurchaseStorage?hl=en_US
[+] [-] huhtenberg|14 years ago|reply
(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!
[+] [-] pg|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] franze|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rkudeshi|14 years ago|reply
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...
[+] [-] TazeTSchnitzel|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mmastrac|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] franze|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] numlocked|14 years ago|reply
Edit: Not so. You can enable the "rapid release" track for your domain by following the instructions here: http://whatsnew.googleapps.com/choose-release-track It may take "up to a day" for the setting to take effect, but once it does your domain's users should be able to opt into Drive right away from https://drive.google.com/start
[+] [-] namityadav|14 years ago|reply
Dropbox definitely has a head-start today, but Google and Microsoft have the scale to offer better prices, existing platforms to tightly integrate their solutions with (Android and Windows), and the brand-power to pull people away from Dropbox. This may be the first time Dropbox has some real competition.
[+] [-] rsbrown|14 years ago|reply
- More storage space, lower price
- Ecosystem for 3rd-party apps
- Integration with existing Google services and two-factor authentication
I like Dropbox and would love to keep using them, but they will need to respond strongly and quickly if they want to keep my business.
[+] [-] cmer|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MikeCapone|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AlexandrB|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] johnpowell|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mistercow|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mikek|14 years ago|reply
"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."
[+] [-] tlogan|14 years ago|reply
So what is point of GDrive?
[+] [-] atdt|14 years ago|reply
Also: no option to disable the dock icon or turn off the hypnotic animation while files are syncing. Ugh.
[+] [-] sakai|14 years ago|reply