With Google's legendary customer service, it's only a matter of time until someone gets their account locked, loses all their files and can't get them from Google because there's no way to speak an actual person.
Has anyone actually gotta their gmail account locked for a non-malicious reason? I can understand your AdSense account or G+ account locked because those have some various more strict rules, but I've never heard of anyone getting their gmail/calendar/docs account locked.
Their automated recovery systems are good enough such that you don't need an actual person. It nags you all the time to enter a phone number and recovery email, and reminds you of the recovery email from time to time.
Is it just me or is this landing page pretty terribly designed (other than the video)?
If I didn't already know what the product is, I would have no idea what I'm looking at. Is it a cyberlocker? Is it a Dropbox clone? Is it a social file editor?
Heck, the landing page could almost just be describing the previous Google Docs functionality.
The most innovative features, OCR and image recognition, are buried away with almost no description of just how useful they might be (privacy issues aside). The file revisions feature is sorely lacking in detail.
Also, the amount of white space feels excessive. Was a second page for features even necessary or couldn't that have just all been on the main page?
I'm sure the product is great and all, but this page is completely useless to send to less technical friends or family members.
Edit: If you want to compare it to Google's other downloadable software landing pages:
I'm curious to know how many people like this trend of having to watch a video when you get to a landing page. Its showing up in more and more places, and I personally dislike it (I don't want to load a video and watch a clip, if I can quickly scan text and images and figure out if I should continue), but I wanted to know what other people thought.
I rarely watch the videos. Life is too short. If I can learn about the service/product by reading, that's fine, if not — I'll just abandon the page. If the service/product is any good, it will come back to me sooner or later via friends' recommendations.
Ideally, I want to see a few images to get an idea of what the product is. If I'm interested, I'll watch the video to actually see how it works.
There are things you notice in a video you'd never grasp just from a few pictures, just like how a few pictures can sometimes explain things much better than a lot of words.
I am fully with you. As a general rule, I process text much faster (and more selectively) than I can process a video.
The only time I prefer video is when it is something that truly benefits from being demonstrated in a way that is cumbersome to describe in words. Working with software is almost always best described in words with some pictures, but I found videos extremely helpful in origami.
I normally go to wikipedia for a description of a service or product rather than sift through all the marketing BS that's normally plastered over a website.
The best thing about this is that it will finally force Dropbox to offer more storage at a cheaper price point. $200 bucks for 100GB of personal storage per year? I've long thought it's ridiculously high for mass adoption and so many more would be using it if the price was a bit more reasonable.
For me:
1. I need much more space than 100GB - I'd ideally like a TB+ on the cloud.
2. The price has to be more acceptable. Say the cost of a TB hard drive on an annual basis. I'm not even going to talk about the likely $1000+ bill for a TB of space at the current price point.
3. I have to admit that Dropbox is pretty cool when it comes to a smooth, painless experience.
Agreed about high dropbox pricing. But it isn't too bad imho.
There are three inter-related concepts: backup (mirror of your hdd), archiving (extension of your hdd), sync (subset of files on multiple devices) and sharing.
But if you're ok with using different services for different purposes, you can easily get what you want.
To archive non-media files, 5 GB should be sufficient. To archive media files, pay $60/yr to Vimeo for video and $25/yr to Flickr for unlimited storage.
For backup, pay $50/yr to Backblaze.
If you try to use a service optimized for sharing and sync (Dropbox) for archival and backup, you're going to experience friction.
I get the feeling that this is also going to force Amazon to lower their S3 prices. To store 100GB on S3's standard storage costs around $12/month right now [http://aws.amazon.com/s3/pricing/]. Even if Dropbox were getting the best price on that page, it would still cost them $3.7/month to store 100GB.
A key differentiator here vs. Dropbox that I think people are overlooking is the fact that you can actually edit your files and collaborate easily. The transition to cloud-based apps is underway, and Dropbox -- in this respect -- is about to be stuck in the past.
I disagree and I have no affiliation with Dropbox or have any vested interest in their success.
I just tend to think that the optimal cloud solution is as close to invisible as possible while letting people use whichever software tools they need. I don't really see any single entity owning the software and the storage because no single entity can own the collaboration tools. I view collaboration and syncing as two distinct business lines without a whole lot of interdependence. Personally I use Google docs once in a blue moon, and even when I do, I don't see how Google Drive makes that process any easier.
It may be that I just don't understand the product, but I don't think this will be any more successful than its competitors except for the fact that, when compared to Dropbox, it is substantially cheaper. But then again, Dropbox may be able to parter with Amazon to keep Google out of the space as much as possible and keep costs down.
The Google Docs integration is disappointing. Just JSON files that open up Google Docs in your browser, nothing useful to point Time Machine or some sort of backup script at.
When I saw my Docs start syncing in, I thought it meant I would be able to work on them offline. I was also disappointed, but I'm sure this functionality will roll out down the road.
Google & Apple make outstanding marketing videos. They are routinely some of the best I see in any industry, and the clear leaders in the tech industry.
The only "startup" I have seen that rivals their quality of marketing videos is Square. Does anyone know how much producing video like this costs?
I actually contacted the guy who made Square's videos and it's in the tens of thousands of dollars. My memory is hazy but it wouldn't surprise me if it's around $50k+. The videos more than pay for themselves, however.
The pure production costs (Animator + Voice Over) aren't going to be high. Anywhere from $1k to $5k depending on how much you outsource and how far away you outsource it.
The ability of a marketing department/agency to distill the product, it's benefits, how it relates to the brand and why you need it is something you can't really quantify. If you watch Mad Men think of the effort that goes into a pitch meeting. That is what you pay for. And that can cost a lot.
The biggest things here are the OCR, image recognition and (hence deeper) search feature for your files. It would be really tough for Dropbox or any other competitor to match these. The Google drive also seems to be available on all platforms so looks like a very good option.
"The Google drive also seems to be available on all platforms"
Not yet. There is no broad based Linux support yet (it supports Android, which is technically Linux, but no Linux Desktop distro is supported) and iOS support is still in the works.
To be fair, file-uploading has been part of Google Docs for a while now (I've been using it to upload encrypted backups). The only difference now is that there's a desktop client and an SDK.
Has anybody tried syncing extisting folders via symlinks? Using Dropbox this is how I prefer to keep track of folders outside of the actually Dropbox folder. Google Drive just seems to ignore them.
Not being able to include other folders would pretty much be a deal-breaker for me :( Any ideas?
Where are you seeing this? I see 25GB for $2.49 USD per month, 100GB for $4.99 USD per month, 1TB for $49.99 USD per month (and a few others) here: https://www.google.com/settings/storage/?hl=en
I like it. Well, I can't use it currently (my drive "isn't ready yet") but I've wanted a more feature-ful Dropbox[1]. With Google killing off tons of projects I love (latest being Picasa for linux, sad face) it's nice to see they're adding cool things in the meantime.
[1] That is, Dropbox's philosophy is to create something dead simple that an idiot can use, whereas I suspect Google's product will be laden with options and knobs. I don't knock on Dropbox - I'm constantly recommending it to people that aren't tech-savvy (and it's one of the few things they understand and start using quickly), but I personally like those knobs and levers. Am I the only one here that doesn't think they're direct competition with each other? They're in the same space and all but I think they're meant for different niches.
Apparently Google Drive isn't everywhere I want to be; it's not "ready for my account" yet. Is it really that hard for Google to make this available for everyone who wants it right away? How many people are trying to do this on opening day?
[+] [-] zavulon|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] VikingCoder|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jxi|14 years ago|reply
Their automated recovery systems are good enough such that you don't need an actual person. It nags you all the time to enter a phone number and recovery email, and reminds you of the recovery email from time to time.
[+] [-] rkudeshi|14 years ago|reply
If I didn't already know what the product is, I would have no idea what I'm looking at. Is it a cyberlocker? Is it a Dropbox clone? Is it a social file editor?
Heck, the landing page could almost just be describing the previous Google Docs functionality.
The most innovative features, OCR and image recognition, are buried away with almost no description of just how useful they might be (privacy issues aside). The file revisions feature is sorely lacking in detail.
Also, the amount of white space feels excessive. Was a second page for features even necessary or couldn't that have just all been on the main page?
I'm sure the product is great and all, but this page is completely useless to send to less technical friends or family members.
Edit: If you want to compare it to Google's other downloadable software landing pages:
http://google.com/chrome
http://google.com/earth
http://google.com/toolbar
http://google.com/quicksearchbox
http://picasa.google.com
http://sketchup.google.com
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] huggyface|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] trustfundbaby|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jwr|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rkudeshi|14 years ago|reply
Ideally, I want to see a few images to get an idea of what the product is. If I'm interested, I'll watch the video to actually see how it works.
There are things you notice in a video you'd never grasp just from a few pictures, just like how a few pictures can sometimes explain things much better than a lot of words.
[+] [-] timwiseman|14 years ago|reply
The only time I prefer video is when it is something that truly benefits from being demonstrated in a way that is cumbersome to describe in words. Working with software is almost always best described in words with some pictures, but I found videos extremely helpful in origami.
[+] [-] grinich|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robmcm|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ozataman|14 years ago|reply
For me:
1. I need much more space than 100GB - I'd ideally like a TB+ on the cloud.
2. The price has to be more acceptable. Say the cost of a TB hard drive on an annual basis. I'm not even going to talk about the likely $1000+ bill for a TB of space at the current price point.
3. I have to admit that Dropbox is pretty cool when it comes to a smooth, painless experience.
[+] [-] luser001|14 years ago|reply
There are three inter-related concepts: backup (mirror of your hdd), archiving (extension of your hdd), sync (subset of files on multiple devices) and sharing.
But if you're ok with using different services for different purposes, you can easily get what you want.
To archive non-media files, 5 GB should be sufficient. To archive media files, pay $60/yr to Vimeo for video and $25/yr to Flickr for unlimited storage.
For backup, pay $50/yr to Backblaze.
If you try to use a service optimized for sharing and sync (Dropbox) for archival and backup, you're going to experience friction.
Just my two cents.
[+] [-] soupboy|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dgurney|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dkrich|14 years ago|reply
I just tend to think that the optimal cloud solution is as close to invisible as possible while letting people use whichever software tools they need. I don't really see any single entity owning the software and the storage because no single entity can own the collaboration tools. I view collaboration and syncing as two distinct business lines without a whole lot of interdependence. Personally I use Google docs once in a blue moon, and even when I do, I don't see how Google Drive makes that process any easier.
It may be that I just don't understand the product, but I don't think this will be any more successful than its competitors except for the fact that, when compared to Dropbox, it is substantially cheaper. But then again, Dropbox may be able to parter with Amazon to keep Google out of the space as much as possible and keep costs down.
[+] [-] ceejayoz|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mshafrir|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ja27|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] twog|14 years ago|reply
The only "startup" I have seen that rivals their quality of marketing videos is Square. Does anyone know how much producing video like this costs?
[+] [-] kul|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JoblessWonder|14 years ago|reply
The ability of a marketing department/agency to distill the product, it's benefits, how it relates to the brand and why you need it is something you can't really quantify. If you watch Mad Men think of the effort that goes into a pitch meeting. That is what you pay for. And that can cost a lot.
[+] [-] tomkarlo|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nextparadigms|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] johnhartigun|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yalogin|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] timwiseman|14 years ago|reply
Not yet. There is no broad based Linux support yet (it supports Android, which is technically Linux, but no Linux Desktop distro is supported) and iOS support is still in the works.
[+] [-] joshe|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jawngee|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Bapabooiee|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] glesica|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] philp|14 years ago|reply
Not being able to include other folders would pretty much be a deal-breaker for me :( Any ideas?
[+] [-] ciupicri|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] daave|14 years ago|reply
The YouTube HTML5 player is still in trial mode, just not stable enough to use on the homepage of a major product launch.
All in good time, there are definitely people at Google working on it :-)
[+] [-] andrewhillman|14 years ago|reply
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)
[+] [-] zgohr|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] tambourine_man|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shuzchen|14 years ago|reply
[1] That is, Dropbox's philosophy is to create something dead simple that an idiot can use, whereas I suspect Google's product will be laden with options and knobs. I don't knock on Dropbox - I'm constantly recommending it to people that aren't tech-savvy (and it's one of the few things they understand and start using quickly), but I personally like those knobs and levers. Am I the only one here that doesn't think they're direct competition with each other? They're in the same space and all but I think they're meant for different niches.
[+] [-] CountSessine|14 years ago|reply
And no linux client.
[+] [-] nextstep|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pgambling|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NZ_Matt|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bvi|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nubela|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] skeletonjelly|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sjaakkkkk|14 years ago|reply