You Made Your Choice. You Won’t Use Google Drive.
Google released Google Drive, a brand new service with which it plans to overtake cloud hosting and file sharing services like Dropbox, SugarSync and even Microsofts SkyDrive. You can get your Google Drive by visiting this link or opening your Google Docs account.
As you may have noticed, Google Docs are no more. Google shut them down in favor of Google Drive. Or – you could put it that Google just added support for other filetypes to Docs and renamed it? Yep, that’s more accurate. Will Google manage to get your files to its cloud?
Users Have Made Their Choice
If you were a Google Docs user, you have already moved all your files to Google Drive – and why not, you’ll get 5 GB’s of space and more storage on your Gmail account. All Gmail users will get 10 GB instead of current 7.5 GBs. On the other hand, if you’re not much of a Docs user, you won’t migrate. The reason? Sure, Dropbox gives away only 2 gigabytes of space for free, SugarSync gives out 5 gigs (same as Drive), while SkyDrive gives out up to 25 gigabytes of space for free. But your files are already in your Dropbox or some other cloud service, right?
Even if you’re not a Dropbox fanboy, there is no objective reason to move your files from any cloud service to Google’s Drive. Both of them work great and even if Google offers more free space than Dropbox, should you just discard your 2 gigs on Dropbox? Or additional 5 gigs on SugarSync? No, you shouldn’t. If you’re on a broadband internet connection with slow upload rate, you’ll probably hate the idea of reuploading your files, right?
[youtube width=”555″ height=”312″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKJ9KzGQq0w[/youtube]
It’s not that you don’t want to use Drive. It’s a good service, no doubt about it. It integrates well with your “Google-Life” and there are some fine client applications which will be of use. The problem with Google Drive is that it doesn’t represent anything new. It’s literary just an expansion of Google Docs.
A Train Long Gone
Google Docs has been with us for several years now, right? When Gmail was introduced, it didn’t take too long for people to develop some applications which allowed you to map your Gmail server space as your own network drive and use it as remote file server.
[youtube width=”555″ height=”312″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SjRH3SImlM[/youtube]
That actually shows that Google had cloud ideas “before it was cool” but didn’t had the audacity to be the first one in cloud storage. Google Drive is a good service (unlike failed attempts to create a social network) and it’s a real shame that Google allowed Dropbox and the gang to take over that market. If Drive was first – if Docs were more than just documents and spreadsheets – Gmail and Drive would be an epic combo. We’d be a step closer to real cloud architecture were our computers would be simple clients and nothing more.
Instead, Drive is just another cloud service out of many, without any chance to take over the market. Being competitive – of course. But Google lost its potential lead long ago.
What do you think of Google’s latest service?
