Google Drive detailed: 5 GB of free space, launching next week

OK, so now when they suspend your Google account you also get to experience loosing whatever you had in Google Drive.<p>Just for this I am converting my Dropbox account into one of their paid packages to do my part in ensuring they stick around.<p>One would hope that at one point Google might start to realize that the way they are handling accounts could work against their own interests. I --and I am sure others-- have exactly zero interest in touching any Google product other than Analytics because it can all go "poof" overnight if an algorithm doesn't like something you did somewhere...and you'll never know why and never have real recourse to attempt to fix it.<p>Just to be clear: I love just about everything Google has done and what they generally stand for. The one thing I hate viscerally is their approach to customer-no-service and how that relates to accounts. This aspect of what they do and how they behave is nothing less than moronic and possibly evil.

We've seen this before. It was called google video. Google ended up buying youtube because even they could no longer deny they'd lost the battle and they couldn't risk it going to a competitor.<p>Dropbox is in for a rough ride, as long as they can maintain focus and quality (beat them at customer support, that should be a walk in the park) they'll be the biggest YC exit ever once Google has run its course with the Google Drive.

I'm hoping this will compel Dropbox to reevaluate their pricing structure. Storage from Google is an order of magnitude cheaper than Dropbox - paid storage starts at $5/year, and for the same $100/year as the cheapest Dropbox account (50GB) you get 8x the capacity.

Should I worry about my privacy if I use this "free" service? I don't really want them to serve me targeted ads based on the contents of my Google Drive. I don't know whether they plan to do anything like this, but still. Giving Google access to my files (in addition to my email, social network, voice mail, contact list, calendar, and reading preferences . .) makes me uneasy.

What specific problem does this fix for the Google ecosystem? This feels very Microsoftian. Very "we must compete in every market" without good reason.

In terms of the business side of this, I think many people are missing the potential Google has with integrating this into Google Apps. A very, very large number of businesses use Google Apps for email/calendar.The whole enterprise cloud storage market is very crowded right now, and Google would have a huge advantage in terms of having that initial foot in the door.

This doesn't seem to have any new details on the service other than that its 5GB and launching on Mac/Windows/iOS/Android, which is all in line with expectations.<p>Given all the recent leaks, it really doesn't seem like Google's doing much more than cloning Dropbox.<p>Was I the only one expecting Google to knock this one out of the park, a la Gmail's introduction?

Seriously - 5Gb in 2012?<p>For any Windows users, just use SkyDrive and Windows Live Mesh - it works wonderfully, is very reliable and has a decent TOS which respects user privacy and your data. You get 25Gb for free, OneNote (which rocks), Word and Excel online. All work transparently with Office on the desktop and office on Windows Phone.<p>My data is synchronised flawlessly between my three PCs and Windows Phone (and has done for the last 3 years, bar the phone which is a new addition). It never resides entirely in the cloud - it is mirrored everywhere so there is no risk if the account is pulled.<p>It generally feels like I have one computer.<p>It's how it should be done and is very under appreciated by the tech community.

The article mentions 23 GB of storage upgrades for HTC users. Can I also get that on my old HTC Desire S? Or do I need a new phone for that?

If this thing works properly on Android, I'm dropping Dropbox in a heartbeat.

My ideal storage solution would be one where I'm not restricted to syncing my own local data. I want to be able to upload it to the cloud then delete it from my HD.<p>This is the mentality I'm used to from Gmail. Everything is archived online and I don't need a local copy. This would surely tie in with the thinking behind the Chromebook?

I guess Linux gets the shaft?

I always loved Google for so much reasons. They knew how to bring amazing, fast and useful stuff to the table but then they lost themselves trying to make a "Walmart" out of themselves.<p>They [started to] (some may say they always did) imitate other successful services, some with success and some with huge failures (many of their social network attempts have been failures).<p>But since about a year, it seems like they're turning from the "good guys" to the "bad guys". They try to kick every successful company out of their specializations. (Kick Facebook with Google+, Kick Spotify with Google Music, Kick Dropbox with Google Drive, etc).<p>I really hate the way they're taking to always get more and more of our data. Sorry Google but after almost ten years of service, I'm currently moving all my data somewhere else.

Sorry for sounding cynical but I am realy curious about the quality of GDrive client apps. The one for Android probably will be good. But I am unsure about the other platforms. Check out Google's "native" GMail app for iOS to see what I mean.

Since Dropbox (and presumably Google) store files only once globally, mapped to the file's hash, it makes me wonder when Google (or Dropbox?) will let you search and then add <i>anybody's</i> (public) files to your cloud account with a single click.<p>That means no more downloading from some slow web site, and then uploading it to the cloud again. Since Google most likely already has the file you're wanting somewhere, all you'd need to say is "I want that file, too" and it will be added to your cloud account. Google could do their own version of MegaUpload pretty easily that way...

What about the most important feature: encryption. Can we use a private key?

Congrats, Google. Only ~2 years after the idea was revolutionary.

8 years ago gmail launched with a whopping 1GB, back then it was HUGE. Have storage costs plateaued so that now 8 years later the best they can offer is 5GB?

'Drive' is kind of a backward-looking name – the evolution of both appliance devices and the cloud means people have less reason to think of 'floppy drives', 'hard drives' and 'flash drives' than ever before.<p>Also, the Google self-driving cars have had more popular attention lately than their cloud storage feints... so many people seeing "Google Drive coming soon" are going to think it's the computer-driver.

I don't care too much about more free space (but it is good).<p>What I want and need: be able to sync different folders to different accounts in the same computer (I can't do this in Dropbox).<p>Be able to choose whatever folder I want for the sync.<p>Be able to 'subscribe' to folders from third parties without affecting my free space.<p>The first company to do this will win the market. (And it will compete indirectly with SVN and Git when used for documents too).

I for one does not think it has any chance competing agaist Dropbox. Every Google client software hasn't been updated for decades. What's the last time you saw an update to that native Google Talk windows client? Google Desktop for Windows? Desktop Search?<p>Google makes desktop clients in a half assed way. It will never be half decent as Dropbox.

We worked on a startup product a few months which is currently shelved. It had a file system like interface and simplified moving files between dropbox, amazon S3, google docs and multiple accounts (any one with two dropbox accounts ?).<p>With all this google drive news, its pretty tempting to bring it back to life :)

eh. 5Gb? Skydrive has like 25

As usual, concerned about privacy.

This is biting Dropbox in the arse in more ways than one: Dropbox has had years to improve their service, add a huge amount of features, and take this concept to new heights. What have they done? Redesigned their Web site? Gee.

Adrive.com offers 50 GB of free space and has already offered for years.

I won't be using this.<p>Google already have my emails, my search history, a chunk of my documents, a chunk of my appointments. Now they can access the files on my computer? I think not!

Sounds like they might use a webdav connection the way the story talks about folders working. I was hoping for more from a story whose title uses the word 'detailed'.

OMG...Finally arrived, Perhaps it is not another 20% project that they don't care....

Ok so now they can analyze my file content too and serve ads based on that ;)

I think "free" should be in quotes.

Same reason I don't want $everything-facebook I also don't want $everything-google.<p>Plus google has little to zero experience at offering big products on non unix/android platforms.<p>EDIT: I didn't literally mean zero, since I'm writing from Chrome