I'm still hoping they'll someday announce Drive (the local file sync part) as the universal Google Data Liberation mechanism.<p>For instance, it would be awesome if with this change you could click a button that says "also sync my gmail with drive" and you'd get a local backup of your email in your drive folder. Many people wouldn't want to waste the GB of local space for the backup, and I don't know what format they should actually use, but having the option would be amazing.<p>Eventually it should be that all your google data should go through Drive and by syncable. Imagine the ease on people's mind -- no matter if all the Google datacenters were struck by lightning or your account alone was disabled for some reason, good or bad -- <i>if you already had your data saved locally</i> with no more than clicking a checkbox.
The prices they put of up for extra storage are exactly half of what Dropbox asks. Also, the 15GB free plan compares well to the 2GB Dropbox plan as you don't have to jump through any referral hoops (or quests), instead you get it right away.<p>In the long run this is a commodity and Dropbox won't be able to compete. In the short term, this is a blog post about Google upgrading a terrible "buy extra storage" page and convoluted offering that consumers up until now couldn't bother to digest.<p>It is an epic race between commodity and incompetence/bureaucracy it seems. Two of the most powerful forces mankind has ever produced. :)
This sounds nice but I'm afraid I can't trust Google with my storage needs due the constant nagging feeling that all my stuff could be gone tomorrow and I would have no recourse.<p>The stories of accounts being turned off for unknown (to the users) reasons are pretty scary to me. The last one was due to the contents of a file in the user's Google Docs account.<p>At this point, Amazon and even SkyDrive sound like safer bets, as odd as that sounds. Maybe with a little more access to customer support I'd be less queasy.
So how about an update to the OSX client so that it doesn't eat resources or choke on shared folders?<p>Or generally put some development behind Drive in general, not just the client but also the apps that have been rebranded as part of Drive? It's hard enough to trust Google not to discontinue stuff as it is, being almost completely stagnant isn't helping.<p>This isn't development, this just moving the deck chairs a bit.
Bullshit, whatever happened to the Gmail Infinity+1 promise? Remember that counter that promised ever increasing gmail storage? This move seems to contradict that goal.
> Google Apps users will also be getting shared storage, so visit the enterprise blog to learn more.<p>This is a big deal. Previously, even though you could upgrade the regular version of Gmail, you couldn't upgrade your Google Apps Gmail storage for any price, even if you were a paying customer. A few of our accounts are getting pretty close to the 25 GB limit for Google Apps Pro customers.
What are "Google+ Photos"? Are these equivalent to when I make an album on Facebook? If so, I'm not a fan.<p>I use SkyDrive and have it so pictures I take with my WP are auto-uploaded. As such, my SkyDrive is filled with tonnssss of pictures (I take a good amount of photos on my phone). But the pictures that get auto-uploaded to SkyDrive are a different "type" (at the very least, simply unfiltered) than those which I would upload to a Facebook album/G+ Photos.<p>I would be annoyed as a Google service user if I had to choose between allocating room for "photos uploaded to drive" and "Google+ photos". They serve different purposes, and a heavy user of both services will have many photos on both.
How about a paid feature to attach your own storage to Drive? Say $5/month, you specify ftp credentials (or sftp), and Drive automatically uses it as additional storage. Ideally you could choose folders that should always or never be stored on the external storage, and for anything else it would automatically push less-used stuff, like a swap.<p>Seems like a win-win. Sure Google sells a bit less storage to advanced users, but many of those users would currently use something like OwnCloud anyway. This would be easier to set up though, lets you have effectively unlimited storage in one directory tree, and opens up syncing to anything that syncs with Drive. On Google's side, after the initial development investment, they get an additional income stream essentially for free.
Not very exciting news. I would've thought they'd at least increase the storage to 20 GB by now. After all it's been a year since they gave the 10 and 5 GB to those 2 services, and storage prices have dropped, while storage needs have increased. Why aren't they keeping up with it?
This is great. Only downside is the limits and prices for the paid plans haven't changed. So before you could pay $5/month for 100GB of drive + 5GB free gmail; now $5/month gets you 100GB combined for both. Still, can't quibble too much over 5%.
They're rolling out great features, but it's still not possible to save all revisions of a file onto your disk in Drive. You have to download them one by one.
Google is evil. Google is nothing ore than another mechanism for the US government to spy on us further enhancing the police state. They are in bed with the NSA and are directly benefiting from their incestuous relationship with the federal government. Look at their recent endeavuours. Google glasses,illegal wifi sniffing, google plus, google fiber, andriod phones, TOS changes, youtube requiring your full name, storing of google searches. They've found a way into every aspect of our lives and thoughts. Wasn't it their mission statement that stated: Google don't be evil? Ya right.<p>Anyone know how to prevent googlebot from spidering my comments? I don't want an IRS audit.