April 26, 2019 • 50 mins
What is Google Drive? How does cloud storage work? How does Google Drive compare to other online storage properties? Listen in as Chris and Jonathan take you behind the wheel of Google Drive in this episode.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to tech Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios
How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
How Stuff Works and I Heeart Radio and I love
all things tech and it's time for another classic episode.
This episode originally published on May twenty three, two thousand twelve,
(00:27):
and Chris and I decided to talk about Google Drive.
It is called tech stuff goes for a Google Drive. Now,
at the time that we recorded this, How stuff Works
was not using Google Drive as a true storage, cloud computing,
you know platform. We we had it personally, but we
(00:47):
weren't using it as a company. That would change over
the years. How stuff Works would adopt Google Drive at
one point, and now we're in another transition phase, which
is a lot of fun. I'm looking at my producer Tari,
who is agreeing with me about how fun it is
to try and transfer from one storage system to another.
She's she's giving me a big I think it's a
(01:07):
thumbs up. There's definitely there's definitely a finger up. I'm
gonna say it's a thumb So I hope you guys
enjoy this conversation. About Google Drive, and I'll talk to
you again in just a moment. So today tech stuff fans,
we're all gonna go on a little Google Drive. O. Cool.
We're gonna talk about those robotic cars that don't need
(01:29):
drivers except you know, when they're sitting in the seat
and they watch the car where you're on somebody else. No,
that's that's not what my notes are on. I was
talking about Google Drive, you know, the cloud storage Google
Drive announced on a Well, this will be a fun podcast.
We're gonna see what our notes show. Um. No, really,
(01:50):
we're gonna talk about Google Drive today and the day
we're recording this podcast, just in case you guys are curious.
I know that you'll be listening to it quite a
while afterwards because we record so early and that ants.
But it's April the day we're recording this, so it's
just three days after Google finally officially announced and launched
Google Drive. Right. It was sort of a one of
(02:10):
those closely guarded secrets like that everyone knew about it,
and everyone knew about like the iPad for two years
before it was released. Right. Yeah, people have been talking
about Google having a cloud storage service for for a
couple of years now, so this was and even Google
made reference to that. But before we really get into
what Google Drive is, we should probably talk about what
cloud storage is in general and why it's important. Uh,
(02:32):
cloud storage is pretty it's a pretty simple concept. The
idea is that you can store data on servers in
the cloud. So you're talking about using someone else's computers
to store your information, and you can access the information
over the Internet using some sort of interface, usually web based,
And they call it the cloud, of course, because the
(02:54):
Internet is a nebulous group of machines and it's just
sort of out there all is changing like a cloud.
So yeah, so, and and the idea being that it's
also kind of like a cloud in the sense that
you can access it from any machine that has that
Internet capability. Right. It may require a special app depending
upon the type of cloud storage. Uh, because not everything
(03:17):
is web based. There are a lot of different desktop
clients that you can have that will allow you to
store information to a cloud drive. So it lives on
your computer's desktop as if it were a regular file folder. Right,
So you think of your your regular hard drive folders
that you would go into to look at various files,
like you might store all your pictures in a in
(03:38):
a pictures folder, and all your videos and a videos folder,
that kind of thing. Um, a cloud storage drive might
show up on your desktop as if it were a
regular folder on your computer, but instead of living on
your computer, the information gets sent over the Internet to
a a remote machine and it's stored on that machine.
(03:59):
And there is no identifier that links that particular file
to you as a user, a registered user of that service.
And uh, in fact, when I say it lives on
one machine, that's not entirely true. Almost every cloud service,
in fact, every reputable cloud service out there uses redundant
measures so that the file is on several different machines
(04:20):
in case one machine fails. I'm real sorry, I only
had one machine and it went down. Yeah, that would
not go over so well. Uh Jester's cloud service, Jester's
cloud service. Yeah, there's never really been up on that whole.
I think I need to I think I need to
register that domain now, Chester's cloud service. We got hair
(04:41):
a cumula nimbus um. So the Yeah, the idea is
that obviously that you would be able to offload storage
from your native device, especially if you are one of
those people who has lots of different devices, and you
want to be able to access the same information no
matter which device you're using. Because in the old days,
(05:02):
back before a cloud storage, a couple of years ago, yeah,
not that long ago, you you only had a few
different options. You could save something to a physical medium,
so a disk for example, compact disc or a floppy
disc way back in the day, or a thumb drive
something like that, and then you could pourt that over
to another device, pull it up from the physical medium,
(05:25):
and then work on it that way, save it back
to the physical medium, and then go back, and you
know it. It was a little cumbersome. It also meant
that you would often end up with lots of duplicate
copies of a particular file, and if people made changes,
then you had to figure out, all right, which one
of these copies has the most recent, most relevant changes,
and then I have to get rid of all the
others or else I'm going to confuse them all. Yeah,
(05:47):
you have to go through and you you end up
looking at creation dates and when things were modified. Wait,
that was done at nine, Okay, I can get rid
of that one. And it takes forever, and and it's
particularly difficult if you have more than one collaborator, Right,
So if Chris and I were working on a document,
it would be frustrating for us to try and and
we're both working on copies of a document, we're both
(06:09):
making changes, be very frustrating to cohlate those changes and
figure out you know which ones are relevant and which
ones are the most recent. Uh, and may very well
be that a change I make makes a later change
that Chris makes irrelevant. So the idea behind cloud storage
is it's not and it's not always connected, but there's
a lot of work around collaboration in cloud storage, so
(06:32):
that if you have multiple people who need access to
a particular file, you are able to share that file
across several instances, and you might even be able to
have multiple people work on that file at the same time,
and those changes will be reflected more or less in
real time for each person. So that way, if Chris
Word did make a change to a sentence within that file,
(06:54):
I could actually see him making that more or less
in real time. This is particularly true with Google Service,
but because Google Drive has been very tightly integrated with
Google Docs, in fact, it's kind of superseded Google Docs
in a way, but other services also offer similar features.
Um And just to clear things up, my my joke
(07:14):
about a couple of years ago, of course, the cloud
is uh much older than that. We've been using variations
on cloud services for many years now. Uh. In fact,
I don't think I think it really proceeds labeling things
as cloud, which is really sort of a convenient marketing
term for for services such as these. Um, it gives
(07:36):
you it when people mention the cloud. It basically serves
as a a hint to say, hey, the materials or
software is being stored on servers on the Internet, not
on your computer. So it's it's sort of a short
marketing shorthand for these services. But yeah, I mean we've
talked about Google Docs many times. I mean it predates
(07:57):
the beginning of our podcast, so um And there were
many services using those kinds of uh, those kinds of
technologies before, but in recent in recent years, there have
been several services that take advantage of cloud storage. Specifically, um,
not simply to store that the software as a service,
(08:18):
you know, or or the documents that you say in
Google Docs, um, but to upload and download your own
file so that you don't have to use a physical medium.
You don't have to worry about losing that that flash
drive you carry in your pocket or your bag. Um,
you don't have to walk a disk from one place
to another or worry about it if you want to, say,
(08:39):
work on a graduate school assignment on your lunch break
at work. I don't know anyone who would have done
that at how stuff works, except maybe me co fle
of years ago. Or you just happen to have like
a whole bunch of really powerful magnets nearby and you
don't want to use magnetic storage. Turn it. I had
my flash drive in my pocket when I went for
the m R. I I was thinking. I was thinking
of the old old floppy disk days. I actually did
(09:00):
lose data on a floppy disk because uh, floppy disk
had a little bit of a close encounter with a
magnet and that was enough to ruin it. Oh yeah,
but um yeah, I mean these these services were being
marketed specifically as a hey, you can store stuff here,
and and um, the services in question, many of them
(09:20):
came from from the little guys. We're not talking about
Apple or Google or Facebook or Amazon or Microsoft. These
were all independent vendors and they would offer. They still
do offer a free tier of service for a small
amount of storage, and then you could upgrade for a
certain price per month you could get more storage, and
for more than that you get more storage, and they
(09:42):
they basically would work that out in businesses. If you
really needed a whole lot of cloud storage, um, you
know you could do that. But gradually the big players
have been getting into the game. And that's why, uh,
everybody has been expecting Google to do it, because I mean, hey,
if anybody's got server storage and data centers, it's Google.
It turns out that storage is relatively inexpensive, so very
(10:05):
very inexpensive over the last few years. So so for
a business to enter into that and just purchase a
lot of different servers specifically to save information from from users, uh,
it's not as big a barrier as some other forms
of internet based businesses. However, it does mean that you
have to create these systems in place for things like security.
(10:26):
You need to have you know, the important things for
cloud computing involved security accessibility. So you want to make
sure that whatever your system is, it's easy to access
on multiple platforms. So that means you want people to
be able to access it via PC, mac, smartphone, tablet.
Lots of different devices can connect to the Internet now,
(10:49):
so you want to be able to give your users
the freedom to be able to access the information over
as many of platforms as possible. You know, the more
convenient your services, the more valuable it is to the customer.
So so security and accessibility and uh, just that that
whole accessibility slash convenience and just the whole idea of
(11:09):
giving a certain tier for free so that you you
show people how valuable the services now and and we
should clear this up. Cloud storage is not necessarily all
about backing up your data, although people have used it
for that kind of purpose. It's really more about, well,
(11:30):
there's certain documents or certain files that you may want
to have stored in the cloud because you want to
have easy access across multiple devices. You may want to
share that with other people, and it's a lot easier
to do that when it's on a web based drive
than it would be on your own computers. So let's
say that I've shot a video and I've got this
video living on my computer, emailing that video out to
(11:54):
all the different people I want to see it. Uh,
maybe I don't want to upload it to something like YouTube.
Maybe I just want to send that directly to a
few people. Well, for example, what if you were trying
to preview a video with the people you were working
collaborating with it on right exactly, you're not ready to
make it public? Yeah, yeah, you might need to still
do some edits. You may you may just be looking
(12:15):
at this with your friends and say, just just doesn't
feel snappy enough. Do you have any suggestions? So in
that case, yeah, you wouldn't want to necessarily upload to YouTube.
I mean, you could upload YouTube and make it private
and then send out the link. But but if you
just would rather skip that stuff and and just keep
it in pre production mode, um, then a cloud drive
would be very useful. You could send out, you could
(12:37):
share the link to that file within your cloud drive,
and then other people could go to your cloud drive
and view that one particular file without having access to
anything else that's in your cloud drive. So all they
would get is access to whatever file you you permitted
them access to. Now you might be able to set
some permissions on files so that they are publicly available.
(12:59):
Would means that anyone who could visit your drive would
be able to see that particular file. But in most cases,
I think people just have special permissions for particular folks
and then and of course you could always say that
where only you have access to it, there's no need
to you know, you're not forced to collaborate. Right, So
those are the that's the basics around cloud drives. And
(13:20):
one of the reasons why I think cloud drives are
getting more important is that you're starting to see, right
about the time we're recording this podcast, in particular, you're
starting to see some some devices come out besides ones
that come from a company company that rhymes with shmapple
that that don't have expandable memory as a feature. So
(13:41):
so in other words, there's no slot for you to
put a memory card into. Oh well, we've already talked
about ultra books, UM, which don't have in general, don't
have optical drives. You know they they save space, save
energy UM by not having that. And you know where
you have a limited amount of storage on board, so
you could you was something like a flash drive or
(14:01):
a portable drive where you have a connection, um, but
you you do need something to store files on otherwise
you know, you're really not going to be able to
create stuff. Well, although granted most ultrabooks probably have significantly
more storage on board than your typical at least you're
free tier of cloud storage out there. Oh yes, definitely.
But things like smartphones, I mean, here's an example. I'll
(14:23):
give a real world example, because again this is a
recording this and this phone was just announced on T
Mobile was the HTC one S. It's an Android based
phone running ice cream Sandwich. It has sixteen gigabytes on
board memory. Alright, sixteen gigs on board memory. No flash
drive knows, no smart card drive at all, so you
(14:44):
can't add more memory to it. That's sixteen gigs is
all you get. However, ht C one S also comes
with a trial period with Dropbox, which is another cloud
based storage system. And we'll talk more about Dropbox a
little bit later in this podcast. So in this case,
you're talking about a smartphone that is encouraging you to
(15:07):
use cloud based storage rather than some sort of physical media.
So that way you have this this your information is
backed up into the cloud. And theoretically, when you are
ready to upgrade your phone or switch phones, or maybe
you lose your phone you have to get a new phone,
you would still have access to that information because it
exists on the cloud, not on a physical device in
(15:27):
your hand. I mean it's it's on a physical device,
it's just that physical device belongs to some other company.
So that's one of the other reasons why cloud storch
is so important is that we're starting to see manufacturers
kind of offload features onto the cloud so that they
don't include them in the phone itself. It helps a
little bit with phone design because it means that you
(15:50):
don't need to build in that feature. You can actually
make your phones slimmer and sleeker. I mean, Apple has
been doing this for ages, but other companies are starting
to do the same sort of thing. Now, that's enough
about cloud storage in general, I think, unless is there
anything else that we need to talk about. There was
one other thing I didn't want to uh to pass
over it too much is UM. And this is something
(16:13):
we've visited several times too, is the aspect of privacy. UM.
You know, a couple of years ago when we were
talking about this UM, you know, when we was starting
to become a public topic. You know, hey, what is
cloud storage? What it was cloud computing? UM? You know,
people didn't really get that and then when you explain it,
they'd start thinking about the documents that you would store
(16:33):
up there and privacy, what if somebody hacks in? Um.
I think it's obvious at this point that the convenience,
UM and accessibility of cloud storage has made it we
were we've gone so far now that I don't think
we're going to go back. Um, but it's obviously. I
just think it's interesting to note that at this point
we are you know, there are things that we look at,
(16:55):
you know, whether this this particular company is more uh
likely to have of good security and privacy then the
other company. But um, yeah, that's it's the security of
these cloud storage uh services has become sort of a given.
Oh well, you know, if they're going to offer this,
(17:15):
they better be offering security because I'm going to use
the service, and you know, that's something I look for
before I do that, so that that doesn't even seem
that seems like a given now when before people are
going I don't know if I want to do this
or not. Yeah, we can talk a little bit about
Google's approach to privacy and security. In fact, we will
have to because there is a controversy that we we
(17:36):
will have to address. But before we do that, let's
get into the basics of Google Drive. So it is
built directly into Google Docs. Now, so Google Docs. The
if you were to open up a Google Docs account,
so which is just your regular Google account, that's what
it's attached to. So if you have a Google account, congratulations,
you have a Google Docs account. You can go to
Google Docs and create a document, whether that's a word document,
(17:58):
word being, word processing document not where it is in
Microsoft Word, but a word processing document, presentation spreadsheet, you know,
all the basic types of office documents. Google has the
those as features. If you were to create one and
save it, it it would save it into your Google Drive
account and you would automatically get the the base free tier,
(18:21):
which for Google Drive is five gigabytes of free storage.
And the nice thing about this is that that doesn't
count any of the documents in your Google Docs, so
it doesn't know I didn't know that. That's interesting. That's
good to know. Uh the Now, what you can also
do is you can download a client onto your desktop
(18:41):
that allows you to drag and drop files from your
computer into your Google Drive, so that you can easily
port over if you've got say, uh, photo album on
your computer and you like the photo album and you
want to keep it, but you don't really want it
taking up space on your local hard drive. You could
copy it, or not copy it, but move it over
(19:03):
to your Google Drive and it would store there. It
would have you have a folder within your Google Drive
where you could access that, and you could access it
with any web connected device that at least any web
connected device, either through the web system or depending on
the device, you might have a dedicated app that would
let you access it. So for example, Google Drive, you
(19:25):
can do that on PCs and max uh and you
can do it on Android phones. And they're working on
the recording of this podcast. They were working on an
iOS app so that you would be able to access
it easily through your iPhone or iPod touch or iPad.
And they also, from what I understand, I did see
(19:45):
an article on a Linux website the other day that
was quite upset that there was not compatibility built in
for Linux as in as in a and a dedicated application.
From what I understand, they're working too. Of course, you know,
if you're using Linux now and and you've probably already
tried to use your drive with it, if you're you know,
(20:07):
a Google customer. Um, you can of course use the
web version. Um. But but they're working on a dedicated app.
From what I understand, that's that's the nice thing. Yeah,
even if your your device doesn't have a dedicated app,
you can still access Google Drive through the web portion,
like you open up a browser and you can go
to Google Drive that way. It's not quite as convenient,
it's not as user friendly. Uh So, I mean that's
(20:30):
why everyone wants the app, because then you know, you
bypass that step of having to go through the web.
It's just like having an app on your phone that
access a web based email client, so that you don't
actually have to open up a browser and navigate to
the email. You just open up the app and there
you are. Same sort of thing. Chris and I have
more to say about Google Drive, but before we do,
(20:51):
let's take a quick break to thank our sponsor. Well,
there's some other interesting aspects that are unique to to
the Google Cloud Drive. Because there's you know, like we said,
there are a lot of different companies out there that
(21:12):
offer comparable services, but they don't all have the same
feature set. One of the things that sets Google apart
is no surprise search. So let's say that you have
a lot of files in your Google Drive. Let's say
let's say that you are one of the people who
you're you've got to upgrade your account because you've got
a lot of data, and you've got lots of different
(21:32):
kinds of files. You've got picture files, videos, text documents,
all that kind of stuff, and scanned documents, so maybe
PDFs or other forms of scanned documents. You have it
all in your Google Drive, and then one day you
need a specific file and for the life that you
can't remember what folder you saved it in, and you've
(21:53):
got so many folders in this drive, it's going to
take you forever to find it. This is something that
does not happen on an in free one basis at
Shase Strickland Um, because I am very very good at
filing things away safely, so safely I will never find
them again. So Google Search is built into Google Drive,
(22:13):
and they have gone so far as to start developing
recognition software. So that let's say that you've scanned in
a lot of documents. Maybe you've got some old documents
that are important to you, perhaps they're old family journals,
and you scanned the pictures and you put them into
your Google Drive, and you think, there's this great document
(22:36):
that my grandfather wrote that is pertinent to this blog
post i'm posting. It would be awesome if I if
I posted a picture of that page, but gosh, I
can't remember where I saved it. Well, the image recognition software,
it actually can scan the scanned documents and look for text.
So if you type in an UM string, like you
(22:58):
know that your grand father wrote about I'll give a
real life example. Let's say my grandfather wrote about a
massive tornado that completely devastated Gainesville, Georgia, which is true,
really did happen. My grandfather was in a working in
a mill at a time, and it ripped the roof
off the mill. My grandfather was very lucky to get out.
Um So, let's say that he wrote this great article
(23:21):
about it, and I had scanned it in I could
type in Gainesville tornado in my Google uh search for
for the Google Drive, and it's going to actually look
and scan the the physical documents, the ones that are
just image files really and return those as well, which
is kind of cool. It's not just scanning the text
(23:42):
in your documents and scanning the images. They're also working
on adding in the image recognition software that you can
find in in products like Google Goggles. So with Google Goggles,
you can hold up a smartphone with a camera to
a particular kind of objects, sometimes like a landmark or whatever,
(24:03):
and Google Goggles will use recognition software to try and
identify what that is. Same sort of thing. Let's say
that you've taken a bunch of pictures of the Washington
Monument and then you think, oh, there's this great picture
of the Washington Monument I want to use, and I
don't remember where I put it. You could search Washington Monument,
and that image recognition software will include any images that
(24:24):
Google identifies as the Washington Monument uh and pulls it
back even if you didn't title the picture that so
the picture could be titled something different. It couldn't just
have the date or some random string of letters and numbers.
But because that image recognition software is part of Google Search,
it can pull that up as well, which is a
(24:44):
really powerful tool. Now, Google does stress that both the
image recognition software and the the scanning of of scanned
files software both of that those technologies are in their
early phases and may not work flawlessly, so uh, you know,
mileage may vary essentially is what comes out of that.
But that that is a differentiator is that you've got
(25:07):
this amazing search tool. It turns out Google knows a
thing or two about search. They've picked up a couple
of tricks that that's really cool. They needed to work
on them. Yeah, no, they've they've got some good some
good work there, and then they're also working there's there's
all the collaborative features that you would get with Google Docs.
So that's included with Google Drive. So assuming that people,
(25:29):
uh you know that you give access to certain files
to people, they should be able to make edits and
everything they're working on, including some other features as well.
They've actually opened up the platform and they've created an
API for for companies to add in their own features,
so extensions and things. So you might be vocation programming interface. Yes,
(25:51):
so you might be able eventually to do things like
send facts from your Google Drive to a fax machine
or to actually have edit videos with in your Google
Drive itself, so you're not just letting people view a video,
but perhaps even edit videos within the drive using this
third party application. But they're the the possibilities are nearly endless. Yeah.
(26:15):
As a matter of fact, they have already made partnerships
with some of these companies that that Jonathan is alluding
to UM for the launch of Google Drive, and you
can go. You can actually find it pretty easily when
you go into your Google account that they have these uh,
these applications that are ready to take advantage of this
UM And as a matter of fact, um, there is
(26:36):
ah some of them have UM special deals. Now that
that's kind of important to note. Uh, just just quickly
that these third party companies are probably still going to
charge you for their services. UM. So you know, it's
not necessarily free, but it does work very very easily,
and it is uh you know, synchronized with Google Drive,
(26:58):
so it makes it very easy to do one from
the other. Right now, your mileage may vary again again. Yeah,
so let's talk a little bit about the tears that
the Google offers. No more tears. That's my Aussie Osborne
reference for the day. Um, actually it's probably not. I'm
sure I'll get a crazy train in there somewhere man
(27:18):
or maybe war pigs. Maybe, I'm not sure how you're
going to get that one. Maybe iron man. Uh, I mean, look,
I can force a reference if I have to be
the first time. Anyway, So the tears that Google offers,
so you've got five gigabytes of free storage. Actually, let's
back that up. Okay, Google makes its money. We're just
(27:40):
a little bit deep. Google makes its money from advertising. Yes,
that's true. Google is an advertising company when you get
down to it, or at least they they run advertising, right,
So let's let's kind of take one step back and
look at Google services. Okay, Google Docs, the previous Google
Docs free. Yeah, female, that's free. Searches free to the user. UM.
(28:04):
Android is free for people to uh to install on
cell phones. Um. All this stuff is offered more or
less free to the consumer. This is one of the
big changes. Because Google's competitors in this space, people like
uh that Jonathan mentioned before, dropbox, Box formerly boxed, dot Net,
(28:26):
Sugar Sinc. Sky Drive, sky Drive which is Microsoft's UM
application for this. These guys all offer tears. There's an
initial free smaller space, and then they are are tiered pricing.
So you get uh, you know, small for free, you
get medium for a few dollars a month, you get
large for a few more dollars a month, etcetera, etcetera.
(28:49):
So this is new. Google hasn't done this with other products. Really,
I can't think of one, uh where it offers tiered
pricing like this. Nothing's pop being the mind immediately. I mean,
you could make some arguments about Google Voice, but that's
a little different. That's a little different. Um. Yeah, so
that's yeah, it is is something to make a call
(29:11):
on Google Voice normally like over the phone. In general,
it's free. Now, granted, what Google could have done is
they could have offered the five gigabytes free storage, and
that would have been it. But see for Google to
offer huge amounts of storage for free would be well
pretty soon Google, that would be eating into Google's revenue.
So it's understandable why they did what they did. Um
(29:32):
and really, when we get into the comparisons, you'll see
it's fairly comparable to the other services. Some offer less
space for free, some offer more. But um, Dropbox, for example,
is I would say, the for what it's worth, the
eight pound gorilla, and yet that offers two gigabytes and
starts at two gigabytes for friends. For friends, you get
(29:52):
five hundred megabytes per referral. And up to sixteen gigabytes
extra storage, so you could have up to eight gigabytes
for free if you referred that many friends to drop Box.
Yeah so, uh but but getting back to it, the
five gigabytes is free for any user. So if you
have a Google account and you have five gigs free
(30:14):
storage online right now, uh, if that's enough, then for
about two dollars, and this is all at launch, I
should say, because if you're listening to this podcast in
I'm sure the prices may be different. But for twenty
for two dollars and forty nine cents a month, you
can get five gigabytes of storage. For four dollars and
(30:36):
ninety nine cents a month, you get a hundred gigabytes
of storage. And if you're really really data hungry, for
a cool forty nine nine a month, for nine dollars
nine cents, you can get a terrabyte of storage online.
So uh so yeah, for people who need way more space.
Let's say that you're that you do a lot of
(30:57):
video editing, because you do a lot of liberation with
other people with videos, and you want to have that
ability for people to all look at it without it
going live in any other way, Um, this would be
pretty useful. And uh, again it's it's kind of comparable
to what other companies offer. Uh, some of them don't
(31:20):
have um as high amount of storage that actually, none
of them offer as much storage as Google Drive does
at its highest tier. The highest tier that Google Drive
offers is sixteen terabytes of storage, which is for seven
a month. Yeah. Well, I would say that some of
(31:42):
them I've seen essentially say hey, if you need if
you really need more storage than this, give us a
call and we'll work something out. Um. But yeah, and
and there are there are a few things. Um. One
you know, this isn't completely new because Google docs has
allowed you to upload files like word Microsoft Word documents
(32:03):
for a little while now. But this is this is
basically the formal, uh, the formal announcement that hey, we
are going to offer you a certain amount of storage
and this is how much it costs. So it's really
a delineation of all of that. Um. Yeah. The maximum
file size that you can upload to a Google Drive
as assuming that you have that much space as ten gigabytes. Um.
(32:26):
And uh, which is one of the larger actually, I
think that's the largest file size among the the consumer
cloud storage, there's enterprise cloud storage. To Amazon offers enterprise
level cloud storage. That's a different animal. Well, in a
way it is, and in a way it isn't, because
some of the other cloud services are using Amazon as
their right story. So in some cases you are using
(32:47):
Amazon Cloud storage, you're just using it through another company.
But yeah, we can genius business model right there. We
can do some comparisons with the others. But first, before
we did the comparisons, I wanted to talk a little
bit about some controversy that popped up. So there are
these things, these terms of service agreements that you know,
standard across the web, and sometimes people read them, and
(33:10):
when they do read them, sometimes they say, hey, that
doesn't sound quite right. Um. So one of the problems
that came up are not even a problem. One of
the one of the questions that popped up all had
to do with part of the Google Drive terms of service,
which said that anyone who would upload or submit content
to Google Drive would grant Google and I quote a
(33:32):
worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative
works such as those resulting from translations, adaptations, or other
changes we make so that your content works better with
our services, communicate, published publicly, perform publicly, display, and distribute
such content end quote, which gave some people the fear
(33:54):
that perhaps what Google was saying is if you upload
your content to our service, we can do whatever we
want to it. Now. In truth, that's not what Google meant. No,
and this is common. I actually found an article on
c net where they had taken the terms of service
from basically everybody, the major players in the cloud storage business,
(34:16):
and there are clauses similar to that in many of them.
And what they're basically saying is, um, you're giving us, Okay,
you put the you put the file on the server.
What they're saying is, you're going to allow us to
make a thumbnail, a derivative work. You'll you'll let us
capture the first page and make it small so you
can see what it looks like. They they have you
(34:37):
have to give them some of these rights to allow
you to access it from other computers, right to share
it with other collaborators with exactly. And that's what I
think they were trying to accomplish. But the way it
was worded freaked people right out right now, And when
you think about a little bit you realize without this permission,
(34:57):
Google drive would not work. Yeah, because you put it
there and you couldn't get it back Google would Google
wouldn't have the permission to display it in a way
that would be useful to you. So, for example, let's
go with the collaboration thing. Here's here's an example. And
I think it was c net that wrote this example. Um,
I want to say it was it was Google. I
think that actually said here's here's what the h here's
(35:21):
a use case scenario that will explain it. But I
think it was seen that that reported it said. All right,
so imagine that you are collaborating with a screenwriter in China,
and the screenwriter is writing in Chinese characters and you
don't read Chinese. So when you open up the file,
(35:41):
Google Translate translates the document from Chinese into English so
that you can read it and it's in a format
that that makes sense to you. Well, those that's changing
that work, it's adapting it in the form of translating it.
And so this permission gives Google the rights to do
that so that that document is actually used full to you.
It's not Google says they're not planning on doing anything
(36:04):
like taking your work that you have uploaded, changing it
around and then selling it somewhere. That's that's not the
purpose of this language. The purpose is just so that
the features within Google Drive are legal because you have
permitted Google to do it. Yeah, or or using it
in ads. Now. I've seen some people say that they
have seen their stuff being used in ads that are
(36:28):
being shown to them, um, but that whether it goes
beyond those people, I haven't heard anything about that, So
I'm not certain exactly how accurate that is, um, because
you know, they do collect quite a bit of information
on you, and they really probably wouldn't need to look
at your documents to be able to target advertising to
(36:48):
you and your interests. Yeah, I mean, it's also it's
also important that you know that these permissions also allow
Google to do things like scan all your documents so
that if you need to search them, they can turn
results on those searches. Otherwise, again, you wouldn't be able
to search anything. You would just have to go through
all that huge pile of files and find what you needed. Again,
(37:09):
it's useful, it's a useful feature, but in order to
do that, you have to grant them those those those commissions. Yeah,
because if you don't then uh then legally Google would
be unable to provide that, at least not without breaking
the law. We've got a little bit more about Google
Drive to cover, but before we get there, let's take
another quick break to thank our sponsor. I think in
(37:37):
the last day or so, the tempers have cooled, but
people are still saying, well, okay, fine, but the way
it's written is very broad, and it could be allowed,
It could allow opening the door to doing these things.
So they're saying that Google was a little reckless is
probably a strong word, but they were a little uh
(37:58):
vague in terms, and and it does grant them those
permissions where they could theoretically do that. But again, these
terms are very similar to the ones used by just
about everybody else out there. I remember almost identical story
from a couple of years ago, and I can't remember
what the company was. It might have even been Google again,
(38:20):
but I remember distinctly that there was a discussion about
this sort of thing and how people were worried that
they were handing their rights over to another company, when
in truth, what was going on was just like this.
It was it was the permissions were there so that
the service could display the work and the way it
needed to be displayed for it to be useful and
(38:42):
uh and so ultimately it just boiled down to know,
we're not selling your stuff. We just need this permission
or else there's no service. We we literally cannot do
what we need to do for us to be useful.
So um yeah, no need to panic, although it's always
good to question just in case. I mean, you know,
Google does still have that that motto of don't be evil,
(39:06):
but you never know well or evil is kind of
an interesting thing that itself is not entirely uh like
one one man's definition of evil may be different from another's.
And I've heard it clarified, um prime that that was
really intended to mean, don't manipulate search results to facilitate advertising,
(39:27):
and it was specifically geared towards that, So you know,
keep your eyes it's always going to keep your eyes open. Yeah, No,
it's it's always important to question. That's not what we meant.
So let's go on to talking a little bit about
how Google drives stacks up against other cloud storage services.
So with the free storage with five gigabytes free storage,
that puts it on the same playing ground as services
(39:50):
like Box and Sugar Sinc. Both of those offer five
gigs as well. Dropbox is a little less, is two gigabytes,
but again, if you start referring other people and they
joined the service, you get five megabytes per referral up
to a maximum sixteen gigs, So you could in theory
have way more storage for free on Dropbox than you
would on these other services. Microsoft sky Drive is at
(40:13):
seven gigabytes, but people who had sky Drive accounts previous
to Google Drives Launch can have up to gigabytes for free. Yes,
but that offer is being made for a limited time,
so if you had that and you want to keep that,
you might want to go quickly over there too. In fact,
by the time this podcast publishes, there may very well
(40:35):
be late, too late, very um so in that case
we're sorry anyway. The the minimum upgrade, so the smallest
step that you can make from free to a paid
service is uh as a little different depending on the
the service. So for Google Drive it's two dollars and
forty nine cents per month for gigs of storage. For
(40:59):
for drop Box, you get the lowest step is fifty
gigabytes of storage for nine dollars and ninety nine cents
a month, So if you're breaking it down per gig,
then Google Drive is cheaper, although you get less storage. Uh.
Box is twenty five gigabytes, so same amount as Google Drive,
same amount storage, but for nine dollars nine nine cents
(41:21):
a month, so it's more expensive. Sugar Sink is thirty
gigabytes of storage for four dollars and ninety nine cents
a month, so uh, it's you get you get five
gigabytes more storage, but it's um it's essentially twice the
price of Google Drive. And then um sky Drive is
twenty gigabytes for ten dollars a year, which is actually, uh,
(41:46):
it's a little less storage than Google Drive. But Google
Drive at tot nine a month, you multiply that by
twelve months, then you're like, oh well, Microsoft sky Drive
in away is a little cheaper. Um. So that's how
those stack up. And also the maximum file size limit
Google Drive blows the others out of the water, except
for Sugar Sink, which does not technically have a file
(42:06):
size limit, but the but box is limit is a
hundred megabytes, so that's that's not too big. Drop Box
and sky Drive both have a limit of two gigabytes
for a file size. UH. The UH, Sugar Sinc, drop Box,
sky Drive, and Google Drive are all compatible both with
(42:26):
Windows and Mac. Box is a business enterprise UM service,
so primarily I mean you can you can get one
if you want one. Uh. All of them have iPhone apps,
except for Google Drive right now, but Google drives working
on it. Uh. The only one that doesn't have an
(42:49):
Android app out of the of the ones I've listed
is sky Drive, Microsoft SkyDrive. Everything else has an Android
app already out on the market. Windows Phone, well, here's
a dock. Microsoft sky Drive has a Windows Phone app,
but Google Drive doesn't, Dropbox doesn't, Box doesn't. Sugar Sinks
(43:09):
is supposedly coming out, so maybe by the time this
podcast because Live Sugar Sink will have THEIRS. UM. They
all are. They all have web access, so you can
access the service over the web, So even if your
device does not have an application that is native to
that device, you can still get there over the web,
assuming you have a browser. UH. And all of them
(43:30):
allow for public file sharing, so that you can actually
let other folks see what's in your drive or see
specific files that you have, you know, enabled public sharing.
You can also do private file sharing with all of them,
so that if you want to have just a group
of collaborators, let's say you're all working on a project
together and you want to be able to look at
(43:50):
everyone else's UM information on a particular file, you can
do that, and then the public itself would be shielded.
They would not be able to see that UM and
most of them offer some sort of collaborative document editing,
although you might have to use proprietary apps in order
to do it. Drop Bucks does not, it's more of
(44:11):
a storage feature than collaboration. Sugar Sinc. Also doesn't, but
sky Drive, Box and Google Drive all do UM. And
then there are a couple of other UH features like
the third party apps UM integration. That's that's pretty much
standard across the board. Sky Drive is specifically going to
be for Windows eight apps, so but others are you know,
(44:36):
pretty much unfettered. So that's kind of how it boils
down to the other major cloud services that are out there,
and there's there's more than that. That's just that's just
a handful of them. Oh yeah, I've I've got different
applications for several of them, including UH A Bunto one,
which is offered by Canonical primarily for Linux users. And
(44:59):
you know, there are there are others out there they're
trying UM and people have a question whether or not
these services are going to continue into the future. UM.
I think Google Drive may end up being a model
for what's going to be happening. Google Drive and sky
Drive basically are you know, sort of hybrids of online collaboration,
(45:20):
software and storage. UM. So the pure storage players like
Dropbox and Sugar Sink may have a difficult time competing
with them in the future, especially since they're owned by uh,
you know, sky Driving and um Google Driver are you know,
big players, and they've got a whole lot of money
to throw at these these um different applications, so you know,
(45:43):
creating larger and larger file storage for free, offering those
services for free. Um. You know, it may not be
very long at all before Google and Microsoft are offering
you ten gigabytes UM or you know, or more than that.
And of course, you know, Apple is doing something very
similar with the the um I work sweet too, So
(46:05):
um it's very possible that the big players in the
industry may run off with it and and the pure
storage guys sort of followed by the wayside. I would
say that is a very very real possibility, but probably
not for another year or two at least. Um, just
as people decide what it is they want to do
with these systems. If they end up using just storage,
(46:25):
you know, hey, I'd rather create a document on my
desktop and then share it with my collaborators on the
on the drive rather than you know, us working on
a document in the cloud in my web browser. I think, Um,
I think the real problem for the consumer in the
short term is going to be, uh, figuring out where
the heck your data is if you're using multiple, um,
(46:47):
multiple services. I do have that problem, yeah, because if
you I have Dropbox and I have Google Drive, those
are the only two that I'm using. I've got like
six or seven. Yeah. I resisted that temptation because I
knew what would happen. But it's the problem you have.
The problem you have within one drive is multiplied when
you have multiple drives. So that's like that's like you
(47:09):
come home and you don't know what which computer has
the file that you need on it. So you've got
four computers in your house for some reason. Uh, like
you live in my house for example. Actually I think
I've got more than four, but anyway, I think i've
got five. Anyway, let's say that you've got five computers
at your house. Then let's they got five computers in
my house, and that I have a file saved on
(47:31):
one of those computers. Then comes the fun part of
going to each computer and figuring out where it is.
The same problem. If you're using multiple cloud storage services,
you're gonna have to go and do search for each one.
That The benefit to it is that you can at
least do that search from one machine, as long as
that one machine can access each of the services you're using,
(47:52):
and if they all have web based access and you've
got a web browser, then you've got that problem solved,
even if it's not the most elegant solution, but still
means that you have to check each one of the
drives and figure out where you have it, and then
you might even fall into that same trap you had
before where you might have duplicate files. You might have
one instance on one drive and another instance on another drive.
(48:14):
So um yeah, that's that's gonna be a problem too,
is that if you use a lot of these services,
then you still have to have some sort of discipline
when it comes to data management. Maybe you only use
one for one particular type of file and use another
for a different one. In that way, at least you
reduce that confusion. Me what I think I'm gonna end
(48:35):
up doing is I'm going to pick one, and I
haven't decided which yet, although let's be honest, Google Drive
is probably the lead simply because I have a lot
of products that run Android, so you know, I'm kind
of locked into that in ecosystem already. But I haven't
completely decided yet. So let's say, you know, whichever one
(48:56):
I decide on, I'm going to eventually move all my things,
all of the things. I'm going to move all of
the things into that folder, and then I'm just gonna
get rid of the others, so that way I don't
have that issue. And that concludes this classic episode about
Google Drive. I hope you guys enjoyed it. If you
have any suggestions about future topics for tech Stuff, send
(49:18):
me an email. The address is tech Stuff at how
stuff works dot com, or pop on over to our
website that's tech Stuff podcast dot com. You'll find an
archive of all of our older shows. You'll find links
to our presence on social media. You'll find a link
to our online merchandise store. Every purchase you make there
goes to help the show, which we greatly appreciate. And
(49:40):
I will talk to you again and really soon. Text
Stuff is a production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works.
For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i
heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Welcome to tech Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios
How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
How Stuff Works and I Heeart Radio and I love
all things tech and it's time for another classic episode.
This episode originally published on May twenty three, two thousand twelve,
(00:27):
and Chris and I decided to talk about Google Drive.
It is called tech stuff goes for a Google Drive. Now,
at the time that we recorded this, How stuff Works
was not using Google Drive as a true storage, cloud computing,
you know platform. We we had it personally, but we
(00:47):
weren't using it as a company. That would change over
the years. How stuff Works would adopt Google Drive at
one point, and now we're in another transition phase, which
is a lot of fun. I'm looking at my producer Tari,
who is agreeing with me about how fun it is
to try and transfer from one storage system to another.
She's she's giving me a big I think it's a
(01:07):
thumbs up. There's definitely there's definitely a finger up. I'm
gonna say it's a thumb So I hope you guys
enjoy this conversation. About Google Drive, and I'll talk to
you again in just a moment. So today tech stuff fans,
we're all gonna go on a little Google Drive. O. Cool.
We're gonna talk about those robotic cars that don't need
(01:29):
drivers except you know, when they're sitting in the seat
and they watch the car where you're on somebody else. No,
that's that's not what my notes are on. I was
talking about Google Drive, you know, the cloud storage Google
Drive announced on a Well, this will be a fun podcast.
We're gonna see what our notes show. Um. No, really,
(01:50):
we're gonna talk about Google Drive today and the day
we're recording this podcast, just in case you guys are curious.
I know that you'll be listening to it quite a
while afterwards because we record so early and that ants.
But it's April the day we're recording this, so it's
just three days after Google finally officially announced and launched
Google Drive. Right. It was sort of a one of
(02:10):
those closely guarded secrets like that everyone knew about it,
and everyone knew about like the iPad for two years
before it was released. Right. Yeah, people have been talking
about Google having a cloud storage service for for a
couple of years now, so this was and even Google
made reference to that. But before we really get into
what Google Drive is, we should probably talk about what
cloud storage is in general and why it's important. Uh,
(02:32):
cloud storage is pretty it's a pretty simple concept. The
idea is that you can store data on servers in
the cloud. So you're talking about using someone else's computers
to store your information, and you can access the information
over the Internet using some sort of interface, usually web based,
And they call it the cloud, of course, because the
(02:54):
Internet is a nebulous group of machines and it's just
sort of out there all is changing like a cloud.
So yeah, so, and and the idea being that it's
also kind of like a cloud in the sense that
you can access it from any machine that has that
Internet capability. Right. It may require a special app depending
upon the type of cloud storage. Uh, because not everything
(03:17):
is web based. There are a lot of different desktop
clients that you can have that will allow you to
store information to a cloud drive. So it lives on
your computer's desktop as if it were a regular file folder. Right,
So you think of your your regular hard drive folders
that you would go into to look at various files,
like you might store all your pictures in a in
(03:38):
a pictures folder, and all your videos and a videos folder,
that kind of thing. Um, a cloud storage drive might
show up on your desktop as if it were a
regular folder on your computer, but instead of living on
your computer, the information gets sent over the Internet to
a a remote machine and it's stored on that machine.
(03:59):
And there is no identifier that links that particular file
to you as a user, a registered user of that service.
And uh, in fact, when I say it lives on
one machine, that's not entirely true. Almost every cloud service,
in fact, every reputable cloud service out there uses redundant
measures so that the file is on several different machines
(04:20):
in case one machine fails. I'm real sorry, I only
had one machine and it went down. Yeah, that would
not go over so well. Uh Jester's cloud service, Jester's
cloud service. Yeah, there's never really been up on that whole.
I think I need to I think I need to
register that domain now, Chester's cloud service. We got hair
(04:41):
a cumula nimbus um. So the Yeah, the idea is
that obviously that you would be able to offload storage
from your native device, especially if you are one of
those people who has lots of different devices, and you
want to be able to access the same information no
matter which device you're using. Because in the old days,
(05:02):
back before a cloud storage, a couple of years ago, yeah,
not that long ago, you you only had a few
different options. You could save something to a physical medium,
so a disk for example, compact disc or a floppy
disc way back in the day, or a thumb drive
something like that, and then you could pourt that over
to another device, pull it up from the physical medium,
(05:25):
and then work on it that way, save it back
to the physical medium, and then go back, and you
know it. It was a little cumbersome. It also meant
that you would often end up with lots of duplicate
copies of a particular file, and if people made changes,
then you had to figure out, all right, which one
of these copies has the most recent, most relevant changes,
and then I have to get rid of all the
others or else I'm going to confuse them all. Yeah,
(05:47):
you have to go through and you you end up
looking at creation dates and when things were modified. Wait,
that was done at nine, Okay, I can get rid
of that one. And it takes forever, and and it's
particularly difficult if you have more than one collaborator, Right,
So if Chris and I were working on a document,
it would be frustrating for us to try and and
we're both working on copies of a document, we're both
(06:09):
making changes, be very frustrating to cohlate those changes and
figure out you know which ones are relevant and which
ones are the most recent. Uh, and may very well
be that a change I make makes a later change
that Chris makes irrelevant. So the idea behind cloud storage
is it's not and it's not always connected, but there's
a lot of work around collaboration in cloud storage, so
(06:32):
that if you have multiple people who need access to
a particular file, you are able to share that file
across several instances, and you might even be able to
have multiple people work on that file at the same time,
and those changes will be reflected more or less in
real time for each person. So that way, if Chris
Word did make a change to a sentence within that file,
(06:54):
I could actually see him making that more or less
in real time. This is particularly true with Google Service,
but because Google Drive has been very tightly integrated with
Google Docs, in fact, it's kind of superseded Google Docs
in a way, but other services also offer similar features.
Um And just to clear things up, my my joke
(07:14):
about a couple of years ago, of course, the cloud
is uh much older than that. We've been using variations
on cloud services for many years now. Uh. In fact,
I don't think I think it really proceeds labeling things
as cloud, which is really sort of a convenient marketing
term for for services such as these. Um, it gives
(07:36):
you it when people mention the cloud. It basically serves
as a a hint to say, hey, the materials or
software is being stored on servers on the Internet, not
on your computer. So it's it's sort of a short
marketing shorthand for these services. But yeah, I mean we've
talked about Google Docs many times. I mean it predates
(07:57):
the beginning of our podcast, so um And there were
many services using those kinds of uh, those kinds of
technologies before, but in recent in recent years, there have
been several services that take advantage of cloud storage. Specifically, um,
not simply to store that the software as a service,
(08:18):
you know, or or the documents that you say in
Google Docs, um, but to upload and download your own
file so that you don't have to use a physical medium.
You don't have to worry about losing that that flash
drive you carry in your pocket or your bag. Um,
you don't have to walk a disk from one place
to another or worry about it if you want to, say,
(08:39):
work on a graduate school assignment on your lunch break
at work. I don't know anyone who would have done
that at how stuff works, except maybe me co fle
of years ago. Or you just happen to have like
a whole bunch of really powerful magnets nearby and you
don't want to use magnetic storage. Turn it. I had
my flash drive in my pocket when I went for
the m R. I I was thinking. I was thinking
of the old old floppy disk days. I actually did
(09:00):
lose data on a floppy disk because uh, floppy disk
had a little bit of a close encounter with a
magnet and that was enough to ruin it. Oh yeah,
but um yeah, I mean these these services were being
marketed specifically as a hey, you can store stuff here,
and and um, the services in question, many of them
(09:20):
came from from the little guys. We're not talking about
Apple or Google or Facebook or Amazon or Microsoft. These
were all independent vendors and they would offer. They still
do offer a free tier of service for a small
amount of storage, and then you could upgrade for a
certain price per month you could get more storage, and
for more than that you get more storage, and they
(09:42):
they basically would work that out in businesses. If you
really needed a whole lot of cloud storage, um, you
know you could do that. But gradually the big players
have been getting into the game. And that's why, uh,
everybody has been expecting Google to do it, because I mean, hey,
if anybody's got server storage and data centers, it's Google.
It turns out that storage is relatively inexpensive, so very
(10:05):
very inexpensive over the last few years. So so for
a business to enter into that and just purchase a
lot of different servers specifically to save information from from users, uh,
it's not as big a barrier as some other forms
of internet based businesses. However, it does mean that you
have to create these systems in place for things like security.
(10:26):
You need to have you know, the important things for
cloud computing involved security accessibility. So you want to make
sure that whatever your system is, it's easy to access
on multiple platforms. So that means you want people to
be able to access it via PC, mac, smartphone, tablet.
Lots of different devices can connect to the Internet now,
(10:49):
so you want to be able to give your users
the freedom to be able to access the information over
as many of platforms as possible. You know, the more
convenient your services, the more valuable it is to the customer.
So so security and accessibility and uh, just that that
whole accessibility slash convenience and just the whole idea of
(11:09):
giving a certain tier for free so that you you
show people how valuable the services now and and we
should clear this up. Cloud storage is not necessarily all
about backing up your data, although people have used it
for that kind of purpose. It's really more about, well,
(11:30):
there's certain documents or certain files that you may want
to have stored in the cloud because you want to
have easy access across multiple devices. You may want to
share that with other people, and it's a lot easier
to do that when it's on a web based drive
than it would be on your own computers. So let's
say that I've shot a video and I've got this
video living on my computer, emailing that video out to
(11:54):
all the different people I want to see it. Uh,
maybe I don't want to upload it to something like YouTube.
Maybe I just want to send that directly to a
few people. Well, for example, what if you were trying
to preview a video with the people you were working
collaborating with it on right exactly, you're not ready to
make it public? Yeah, yeah, you might need to still
do some edits. You may you may just be looking
(12:15):
at this with your friends and say, just just doesn't
feel snappy enough. Do you have any suggestions? So in
that case, yeah, you wouldn't want to necessarily upload to YouTube.
I mean, you could upload YouTube and make it private
and then send out the link. But but if you
just would rather skip that stuff and and just keep
it in pre production mode, um, then a cloud drive
would be very useful. You could send out, you could
(12:37):
share the link to that file within your cloud drive,
and then other people could go to your cloud drive
and view that one particular file without having access to
anything else that's in your cloud drive. So all they
would get is access to whatever file you you permitted
them access to. Now you might be able to set
some permissions on files so that they are publicly available.
(12:59):
Would means that anyone who could visit your drive would
be able to see that particular file. But in most cases,
I think people just have special permissions for particular folks
and then and of course you could always say that
where only you have access to it, there's no need
to you know, you're not forced to collaborate. Right, So
those are the that's the basics around cloud drives. And
(13:20):
one of the reasons why I think cloud drives are
getting more important is that you're starting to see, right
about the time we're recording this podcast, in particular, you're
starting to see some some devices come out besides ones
that come from a company company that rhymes with shmapple
that that don't have expandable memory as a feature. So
(13:41):
so in other words, there's no slot for you to
put a memory card into. Oh well, we've already talked
about ultra books, UM, which don't have in general, don't
have optical drives. You know they they save space, save
energy UM by not having that. And you know where
you have a limited amount of storage on board, so
you could you was something like a flash drive or
(14:01):
a portable drive where you have a connection, um, but
you you do need something to store files on otherwise
you know, you're really not going to be able to
create stuff. Well, although granted most ultrabooks probably have significantly
more storage on board than your typical at least you're
free tier of cloud storage out there. Oh yes, definitely.
But things like smartphones, I mean, here's an example. I'll
(14:23):
give a real world example, because again this is a
recording this and this phone was just announced on T
Mobile was the HTC one S. It's an Android based
phone running ice cream Sandwich. It has sixteen gigabytes on
board memory. Alright, sixteen gigs on board memory. No flash
drive knows, no smart card drive at all, so you
(14:44):
can't add more memory to it. That's sixteen gigs is
all you get. However, ht C one S also comes
with a trial period with Dropbox, which is another cloud
based storage system. And we'll talk more about Dropbox a
little bit later in this podcast. So in this case,
you're talking about a smartphone that is encouraging you to
(15:07):
use cloud based storage rather than some sort of physical media.
So that way you have this this your information is
backed up into the cloud. And theoretically, when you are
ready to upgrade your phone or switch phones, or maybe
you lose your phone you have to get a new phone,
you would still have access to that information because it
exists on the cloud, not on a physical device in
(15:27):
your hand. I mean it's it's on a physical device,
it's just that physical device belongs to some other company.
So that's one of the other reasons why cloud storch
is so important is that we're starting to see manufacturers
kind of offload features onto the cloud so that they
don't include them in the phone itself. It helps a
little bit with phone design because it means that you
(15:50):
don't need to build in that feature. You can actually
make your phones slimmer and sleeker. I mean, Apple has
been doing this for ages, but other companies are starting
to do the same sort of thing. Now, that's enough
about cloud storage in general, I think, unless is there
anything else that we need to talk about. There was
one other thing I didn't want to uh to pass
over it too much is UM. And this is something
(16:13):
we've visited several times too, is the aspect of privacy. UM.
You know, a couple of years ago when we were
talking about this UM, you know, when we was starting
to become a public topic. You know, hey, what is
cloud storage? What it was cloud computing? UM? You know,
people didn't really get that and then when you explain it,
they'd start thinking about the documents that you would store
(16:33):
up there and privacy, what if somebody hacks in? Um.
I think it's obvious at this point that the convenience,
UM and accessibility of cloud storage has made it we
were we've gone so far now that I don't think
we're going to go back. Um, but it's obviously. I
just think it's interesting to note that at this point
we are you know, there are things that we look at,
(16:55):
you know, whether this this particular company is more uh
likely to have of good security and privacy then the
other company. But um, yeah, that's it's the security of
these cloud storage uh services has become sort of a given.
Oh well, you know, if they're going to offer this,
(17:15):
they better be offering security because I'm going to use
the service, and you know, that's something I look for
before I do that, so that that doesn't even seem
that seems like a given now when before people are
going I don't know if I want to do this
or not. Yeah, we can talk a little bit about
Google's approach to privacy and security. In fact, we will
have to because there is a controversy that we we
(17:36):
will have to address. But before we do that, let's
get into the basics of Google Drive. So it is
built directly into Google Docs. Now, so Google Docs. The
if you were to open up a Google Docs account,
so which is just your regular Google account, that's what
it's attached to. So if you have a Google account, congratulations,
you have a Google Docs account. You can go to
Google Docs and create a document, whether that's a word document,
(17:58):
word being, word processing document not where it is in
Microsoft Word, but a word processing document, presentation spreadsheet, you know,
all the basic types of office documents. Google has the
those as features. If you were to create one and
save it, it it would save it into your Google Drive
account and you would automatically get the the base free tier,
(18:21):
which for Google Drive is five gigabytes of free storage.
And the nice thing about this is that that doesn't
count any of the documents in your Google Docs, so
it doesn't know I didn't know that. That's interesting. That's
good to know. Uh the Now, what you can also
do is you can download a client onto your desktop
(18:41):
that allows you to drag and drop files from your
computer into your Google Drive, so that you can easily
port over if you've got say, uh, photo album on
your computer and you like the photo album and you
want to keep it, but you don't really want it
taking up space on your local hard drive. You could
copy it, or not copy it, but move it over
(19:03):
to your Google Drive and it would store there. It
would have you have a folder within your Google Drive
where you could access that, and you could access it
with any web connected device that at least any web
connected device, either through the web system or depending on
the device, you might have a dedicated app that would
let you access it. So for example, Google Drive, you
(19:25):
can do that on PCs and max uh and you
can do it on Android phones. And they're working on
the recording of this podcast. They were working on an
iOS app so that you would be able to access
it easily through your iPhone or iPod touch or iPad.
And they also, from what I understand, I did see
(19:45):
an article on a Linux website the other day that
was quite upset that there was not compatibility built in
for Linux as in as in a and a dedicated application.
From what I understand, they're working too. Of course, you know,
if you're using Linux now and and you've probably already
tried to use your drive with it, if you're you know,
(20:07):
a Google customer. Um, you can of course use the
web version. Um. But but they're working on a dedicated app.
From what I understand, that's that's the nice thing. Yeah,
even if your your device doesn't have a dedicated app,
you can still access Google Drive through the web portion,
like you open up a browser and you can go
to Google Drive that way. It's not quite as convenient,
it's not as user friendly. Uh So, I mean that's
(20:30):
why everyone wants the app, because then you know, you
bypass that step of having to go through the web.
It's just like having an app on your phone that
access a web based email client, so that you don't
actually have to open up a browser and navigate to
the email. You just open up the app and there
you are. Same sort of thing. Chris and I have
more to say about Google Drive, but before we do,
(20:51):
let's take a quick break to thank our sponsor. Well,
there's some other interesting aspects that are unique to to
the Google Cloud Drive. Because there's you know, like we said,
there are a lot of different companies out there that
(21:12):
offer comparable services, but they don't all have the same
feature set. One of the things that sets Google apart
is no surprise search. So let's say that you have
a lot of files in your Google Drive. Let's say
let's say that you are one of the people who
you're you've got to upgrade your account because you've got
a lot of data, and you've got lots of different
(21:32):
kinds of files. You've got picture files, videos, text documents,
all that kind of stuff, and scanned documents, so maybe
PDFs or other forms of scanned documents. You have it
all in your Google Drive, and then one day you
need a specific file and for the life that you
can't remember what folder you saved it in, and you've
(21:53):
got so many folders in this drive, it's going to
take you forever to find it. This is something that
does not happen on an in free one basis at
Shase Strickland Um, because I am very very good at
filing things away safely, so safely I will never find
them again. So Google Search is built into Google Drive,
(22:13):
and they have gone so far as to start developing
recognition software. So that let's say that you've scanned in
a lot of documents. Maybe you've got some old documents
that are important to you, perhaps they're old family journals,
and you scanned the pictures and you put them into
your Google Drive, and you think, there's this great document
(22:36):
that my grandfather wrote that is pertinent to this blog
post i'm posting. It would be awesome if I if
I posted a picture of that page, but gosh, I
can't remember where I saved it. Well, the image recognition software,
it actually can scan the scanned documents and look for text.
So if you type in an UM string, like you
(22:58):
know that your grand father wrote about I'll give a
real life example. Let's say my grandfather wrote about a
massive tornado that completely devastated Gainesville, Georgia, which is true,
really did happen. My grandfather was in a working in
a mill at a time, and it ripped the roof
off the mill. My grandfather was very lucky to get out.
Um So, let's say that he wrote this great article
(23:21):
about it, and I had scanned it in I could
type in Gainesville tornado in my Google uh search for
for the Google Drive, and it's going to actually look
and scan the the physical documents, the ones that are
just image files really and return those as well, which
is kind of cool. It's not just scanning the text
(23:42):
in your documents and scanning the images. They're also working
on adding in the image recognition software that you can
find in in products like Google Goggles. So with Google Goggles,
you can hold up a smartphone with a camera to
a particular kind of objects, sometimes like a landmark or whatever,
(24:03):
and Google Goggles will use recognition software to try and
identify what that is. Same sort of thing. Let's say
that you've taken a bunch of pictures of the Washington
Monument and then you think, oh, there's this great picture
of the Washington Monument I want to use, and I
don't remember where I put it. You could search Washington Monument,
and that image recognition software will include any images that
(24:24):
Google identifies as the Washington Monument uh and pulls it
back even if you didn't title the picture that so
the picture could be titled something different. It couldn't just
have the date or some random string of letters and numbers.
But because that image recognition software is part of Google Search,
it can pull that up as well, which is a
(24:44):
really powerful tool. Now, Google does stress that both the
image recognition software and the the scanning of of scanned
files software both of that those technologies are in their
early phases and may not work flawlessly, so uh, you know,
mileage may vary essentially is what comes out of that.
But that that is a differentiator is that you've got
(25:07):
this amazing search tool. It turns out Google knows a
thing or two about search. They've picked up a couple
of tricks that that's really cool. They needed to work
on them. Yeah, no, they've they've got some good some
good work there, and then they're also working there's there's
all the collaborative features that you would get with Google Docs.
So that's included with Google Drive. So assuming that people,
(25:29):
uh you know that you give access to certain files
to people, they should be able to make edits and
everything they're working on, including some other features as well.
They've actually opened up the platform and they've created an
API for for companies to add in their own features,
so extensions and things. So you might be vocation programming interface. Yes,
(25:51):
so you might be able eventually to do things like
send facts from your Google Drive to a fax machine
or to actually have edit videos with in your Google
Drive itself, so you're not just letting people view a video,
but perhaps even edit videos within the drive using this
third party application. But they're the the possibilities are nearly endless. Yeah.
(26:15):
As a matter of fact, they have already made partnerships
with some of these companies that that Jonathan is alluding
to UM for the launch of Google Drive, and you
can go. You can actually find it pretty easily when
you go into your Google account that they have these uh,
these applications that are ready to take advantage of this
UM And as a matter of fact, um, there is
(26:36):
ah some of them have UM special deals. Now that
that's kind of important to note. Uh, just just quickly
that these third party companies are probably still going to
charge you for their services. UM. So you know, it's
not necessarily free, but it does work very very easily,
and it is uh you know, synchronized with Google Drive,
(26:58):
so it makes it very easy to do one from
the other. Right now, your mileage may vary again again. Yeah,
so let's talk a little bit about the tears that
the Google offers. No more tears. That's my Aussie Osborne
reference for the day. Um, actually it's probably not. I'm
sure I'll get a crazy train in there somewhere man
(27:18):
or maybe war pigs. Maybe, I'm not sure how you're
going to get that one. Maybe iron man. Uh, I mean, look,
I can force a reference if I have to be
the first time. Anyway, So the tears that Google offers,
so you've got five gigabytes of free storage. Actually, let's
back that up. Okay, Google makes its money. We're just
(27:40):
a little bit deep. Google makes its money from advertising. Yes,
that's true. Google is an advertising company when you get
down to it, or at least they they run advertising, right,
So let's let's kind of take one step back and
look at Google services. Okay, Google Docs, the previous Google
Docs free. Yeah, female, that's free. Searches free to the user. UM.
(28:04):
Android is free for people to uh to install on
cell phones. Um. All this stuff is offered more or
less free to the consumer. This is one of the
big changes. Because Google's competitors in this space, people like
uh that Jonathan mentioned before, dropbox, Box formerly boxed, dot Net,
(28:26):
Sugar Sinc. Sky Drive, sky Drive which is Microsoft's UM
application for this. These guys all offer tears. There's an
initial free smaller space, and then they are are tiered pricing.
So you get uh, you know, small for free, you
get medium for a few dollars a month, you get
large for a few more dollars a month, etcetera, etcetera.
(28:49):
So this is new. Google hasn't done this with other products. Really,
I can't think of one, uh where it offers tiered
pricing like this. Nothing's pop being the mind immediately. I mean,
you could make some arguments about Google Voice, but that's
a little different. That's a little different. Um. Yeah, so
that's yeah, it is is something to make a call
(29:11):
on Google Voice normally like over the phone. In general,
it's free. Now, granted, what Google could have done is
they could have offered the five gigabytes free storage, and
that would have been it. But see for Google to
offer huge amounts of storage for free would be well
pretty soon Google, that would be eating into Google's revenue.
So it's understandable why they did what they did. Um
(29:32):
and really, when we get into the comparisons, you'll see
it's fairly comparable to the other services. Some offer less
space for free, some offer more. But um, Dropbox, for example,
is I would say, the for what it's worth, the
eight pound gorilla, and yet that offers two gigabytes and
starts at two gigabytes for friends. For friends, you get
(29:52):
five hundred megabytes per referral. And up to sixteen gigabytes
extra storage, so you could have up to eight gigabytes
for free if you referred that many friends to drop Box.
Yeah so, uh but but getting back to it, the
five gigabytes is free for any user. So if you
have a Google account and you have five gigs free
(30:14):
storage online right now, uh, if that's enough, then for
about two dollars, and this is all at launch, I
should say, because if you're listening to this podcast in
I'm sure the prices may be different. But for twenty
for two dollars and forty nine cents a month, you
can get five gigabytes of storage. For four dollars and
(30:36):
ninety nine cents a month, you get a hundred gigabytes
of storage. And if you're really really data hungry, for
a cool forty nine nine a month, for nine dollars
nine cents, you can get a terrabyte of storage online.
So uh so yeah, for people who need way more space.
Let's say that you're that you do a lot of
(30:57):
video editing, because you do a lot of liberation with
other people with videos, and you want to have that
ability for people to all look at it without it
going live in any other way, Um, this would be
pretty useful. And uh, again it's it's kind of comparable
to what other companies offer. Uh, some of them don't
(31:20):
have um as high amount of storage that actually, none
of them offer as much storage as Google Drive does
at its highest tier. The highest tier that Google Drive
offers is sixteen terabytes of storage, which is for seven
a month. Yeah. Well, I would say that some of
(31:42):
them I've seen essentially say hey, if you need if
you really need more storage than this, give us a
call and we'll work something out. Um. But yeah, and
and there are there are a few things. Um. One
you know, this isn't completely new because Google docs has
allowed you to upload files like word Microsoft Word documents
(32:03):
for a little while now. But this is this is
basically the formal, uh, the formal announcement that hey, we
are going to offer you a certain amount of storage
and this is how much it costs. So it's really
a delineation of all of that. Um. Yeah. The maximum
file size that you can upload to a Google Drive
as assuming that you have that much space as ten gigabytes. Um.
(32:26):
And uh, which is one of the larger actually, I
think that's the largest file size among the the consumer
cloud storage, there's enterprise cloud storage. To Amazon offers enterprise
level cloud storage. That's a different animal. Well, in a
way it is, and in a way it isn't, because
some of the other cloud services are using Amazon as
their right story. So in some cases you are using
(32:47):
Amazon Cloud storage, you're just using it through another company.
But yeah, we can genius business model right there. We
can do some comparisons with the others. But first, before
we did the comparisons, I wanted to talk a little
bit about some controversy that popped up. So there are
these things, these terms of service agreements that you know,
standard across the web, and sometimes people read them, and
(33:10):
when they do read them, sometimes they say, hey, that
doesn't sound quite right. Um. So one of the problems
that came up are not even a problem. One of
the one of the questions that popped up all had
to do with part of the Google Drive terms of service,
which said that anyone who would upload or submit content
to Google Drive would grant Google and I quote a
(33:32):
worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative
works such as those resulting from translations, adaptations, or other
changes we make so that your content works better with
our services, communicate, published publicly, perform publicly, display, and distribute
such content end quote, which gave some people the fear
(33:54):
that perhaps what Google was saying is if you upload
your content to our service, we can do whatever we
want to it. Now. In truth, that's not what Google meant. No,
and this is common. I actually found an article on
c net where they had taken the terms of service
from basically everybody, the major players in the cloud storage business,
(34:16):
and there are clauses similar to that in many of them.
And what they're basically saying is, um, you're giving us, Okay,
you put the you put the file on the server.
What they're saying is, you're going to allow us to
make a thumbnail, a derivative work. You'll you'll let us
capture the first page and make it small so you
can see what it looks like. They they have you
(34:37):
have to give them some of these rights to allow
you to access it from other computers, right to share
it with other collaborators with exactly. And that's what I
think they were trying to accomplish. But the way it
was worded freaked people right out right now, And when
you think about a little bit you realize without this permission,
(34:57):
Google drive would not work. Yeah, because you put it
there and you couldn't get it back Google would Google
wouldn't have the permission to display it in a way
that would be useful to you. So, for example, let's
go with the collaboration thing. Here's here's an example. And
I think it was c net that wrote this example. Um,
I want to say it was it was Google. I
think that actually said here's here's what the h here's
(35:21):
a use case scenario that will explain it. But I
think it was seen that that reported it said. All right,
so imagine that you are collaborating with a screenwriter in China,
and the screenwriter is writing in Chinese characters and you
don't read Chinese. So when you open up the file,
(35:41):
Google Translate translates the document from Chinese into English so
that you can read it and it's in a format
that that makes sense to you. Well, those that's changing
that work, it's adapting it in the form of translating it.
And so this permission gives Google the rights to do
that so that that document is actually used full to you.
It's not Google says they're not planning on doing anything
(36:04):
like taking your work that you have uploaded, changing it
around and then selling it somewhere. That's that's not the
purpose of this language. The purpose is just so that
the features within Google Drive are legal because you have
permitted Google to do it. Yeah, or or using it
in ads. Now. I've seen some people say that they
have seen their stuff being used in ads that are
(36:28):
being shown to them, um, but that whether it goes
beyond those people, I haven't heard anything about that, So
I'm not certain exactly how accurate that is, um, because
you know, they do collect quite a bit of information
on you, and they really probably wouldn't need to look
at your documents to be able to target advertising to
(36:48):
you and your interests. Yeah, I mean, it's also it's
also important that you know that these permissions also allow
Google to do things like scan all your documents so
that if you need to search them, they can turn
results on those searches. Otherwise, again, you wouldn't be able
to search anything. You would just have to go through
all that huge pile of files and find what you needed. Again,
(37:09):
it's useful, it's a useful feature, but in order to
do that, you have to grant them those those those commissions. Yeah,
because if you don't then uh then legally Google would
be unable to provide that, at least not without breaking
the law. We've got a little bit more about Google
Drive to cover, but before we get there, let's take
another quick break to thank our sponsor. I think in
(37:37):
the last day or so, the tempers have cooled, but
people are still saying, well, okay, fine, but the way
it's written is very broad, and it could be allowed,
It could allow opening the door to doing these things.
So they're saying that Google was a little reckless is
probably a strong word, but they were a little uh
(37:58):
vague in terms, and and it does grant them those
permissions where they could theoretically do that. But again, these
terms are very similar to the ones used by just
about everybody else out there. I remember almost identical story
from a couple of years ago, and I can't remember
what the company was. It might have even been Google again,
(38:20):
but I remember distinctly that there was a discussion about
this sort of thing and how people were worried that
they were handing their rights over to another company, when
in truth, what was going on was just like this.
It was it was the permissions were there so that
the service could display the work and the way it
needed to be displayed for it to be useful and
(38:42):
uh and so ultimately it just boiled down to know,
we're not selling your stuff. We just need this permission
or else there's no service. We we literally cannot do
what we need to do for us to be useful.
So um yeah, no need to panic, although it's always
good to question just in case. I mean, you know,
Google does still have that that motto of don't be evil,
(39:06):
but you never know well or evil is kind of
an interesting thing that itself is not entirely uh like
one one man's definition of evil may be different from another's.
And I've heard it clarified, um prime that that was
really intended to mean, don't manipulate search results to facilitate advertising,
(39:27):
and it was specifically geared towards that, So you know,
keep your eyes it's always going to keep your eyes open. Yeah, No,
it's it's always important to question. That's not what we meant.
So let's go on to talking a little bit about
how Google drives stacks up against other cloud storage services.
So with the free storage with five gigabytes free storage,
that puts it on the same playing ground as services
(39:50):
like Box and Sugar Sinc. Both of those offer five
gigs as well. Dropbox is a little less, is two gigabytes,
but again, if you start referring other people and they
joined the service, you get five megabytes per referral up
to a maximum sixteen gigs, So you could in theory
have way more storage for free on Dropbox than you
would on these other services. Microsoft sky Drive is at
(40:13):
seven gigabytes, but people who had sky Drive accounts previous
to Google Drives Launch can have up to gigabytes for free. Yes,
but that offer is being made for a limited time,
so if you had that and you want to keep that,
you might want to go quickly over there too. In fact,
by the time this podcast publishes, there may very well
(40:35):
be late, too late, very um so in that case
we're sorry anyway. The the minimum upgrade, so the smallest
step that you can make from free to a paid
service is uh as a little different depending on the
the service. So for Google Drive it's two dollars and
forty nine cents per month for gigs of storage. For
(40:59):
for drop Box, you get the lowest step is fifty
gigabytes of storage for nine dollars and ninety nine cents
a month, So if you're breaking it down per gig,
then Google Drive is cheaper, although you get less storage. Uh.
Box is twenty five gigabytes, so same amount as Google Drive,
same amount storage, but for nine dollars nine nine cents
(41:21):
a month, so it's more expensive. Sugar Sink is thirty
gigabytes of storage for four dollars and ninety nine cents
a month, so uh, it's you get you get five
gigabytes more storage, but it's um it's essentially twice the
price of Google Drive. And then um sky Drive is
twenty gigabytes for ten dollars a year, which is actually, uh,
(41:46):
it's a little less storage than Google Drive. But Google
Drive at tot nine a month, you multiply that by
twelve months, then you're like, oh well, Microsoft sky Drive
in away is a little cheaper. Um. So that's how
those stack up. And also the maximum file size limit
Google Drive blows the others out of the water, except
for Sugar Sink, which does not technically have a file
(42:06):
size limit, but the but box is limit is a
hundred megabytes, so that's that's not too big. Drop Box
and sky Drive both have a limit of two gigabytes
for a file size. UH. The UH, Sugar Sinc, drop Box,
sky Drive, and Google Drive are all compatible both with
(42:26):
Windows and Mac. Box is a business enterprise UM service,
so primarily I mean you can you can get one
if you want one. Uh. All of them have iPhone apps,
except for Google Drive right now, but Google drives working
on it. Uh. The only one that doesn't have an
(42:49):
Android app out of the of the ones I've listed
is sky Drive, Microsoft SkyDrive. Everything else has an Android
app already out on the market. Windows Phone, well, here's
a dock. Microsoft sky Drive has a Windows Phone app,
but Google Drive doesn't, Dropbox doesn't, Box doesn't. Sugar Sinks
(43:09):
is supposedly coming out, so maybe by the time this
podcast because Live Sugar Sink will have THEIRS. UM. They
all are. They all have web access, so you can
access the service over the web, So even if your
device does not have an application that is native to
that device, you can still get there over the web,
assuming you have a browser. UH. And all of them
(43:30):
allow for public file sharing, so that you can actually
let other folks see what's in your drive or see
specific files that you have, you know, enabled public sharing.
You can also do private file sharing with all of them,
so that if you want to have just a group
of collaborators, let's say you're all working on a project
together and you want to be able to look at
(43:50):
everyone else's UM information on a particular file, you can
do that, and then the public itself would be shielded.
They would not be able to see that UM and
most of them offer some sort of collaborative document editing,
although you might have to use proprietary apps in order
to do it. Drop Bucks does not, it's more of
(44:11):
a storage feature than collaboration. Sugar Sinc. Also doesn't, but
sky Drive, Box and Google Drive all do UM. And
then there are a couple of other UH features like
the third party apps UM integration. That's that's pretty much
standard across the board. Sky Drive is specifically going to
be for Windows eight apps, so but others are you know,
(44:36):
pretty much unfettered. So that's kind of how it boils
down to the other major cloud services that are out there,
and there's there's more than that. That's just that's just
a handful of them. Oh yeah, I've I've got different
applications for several of them, including UH A Bunto one,
which is offered by Canonical primarily for Linux users. And
(44:59):
you know, there are there are others out there they're
trying UM and people have a question whether or not
these services are going to continue into the future. UM.
I think Google Drive may end up being a model
for what's going to be happening. Google Drive and sky
Drive basically are you know, sort of hybrids of online collaboration,
(45:20):
software and storage. UM. So the pure storage players like
Dropbox and Sugar Sink may have a difficult time competing
with them in the future, especially since they're owned by uh,
you know, sky Driving and um Google Driver are you know,
big players, and they've got a whole lot of money
to throw at these these um different applications, so you know,
(45:43):
creating larger and larger file storage for free, offering those
services for free. Um. You know, it may not be
very long at all before Google and Microsoft are offering
you ten gigabytes UM or you know, or more than that.
And of course, you know, Apple is doing something very
similar with the the um I work sweet too, So
(46:05):
um it's very possible that the big players in the
industry may run off with it and and the pure
storage guys sort of followed by the wayside. I would
say that is a very very real possibility, but probably
not for another year or two at least. Um, just
as people decide what it is they want to do
with these systems. If they end up using just storage,
(46:25):
you know, hey, I'd rather create a document on my
desktop and then share it with my collaborators on the
on the drive rather than you know, us working on
a document in the cloud in my web browser. I think, Um,
I think the real problem for the consumer in the
short term is going to be, uh, figuring out where
the heck your data is if you're using multiple, um,
(46:47):
multiple services. I do have that problem, yeah, because if
you I have Dropbox and I have Google Drive, those
are the only two that I'm using. I've got like
six or seven. Yeah. I resisted that temptation because I
knew what would happen. But it's the problem you have.
The problem you have within one drive is multiplied when
you have multiple drives. So that's like that's like you
(47:09):
come home and you don't know what which computer has
the file that you need on it. So you've got
four computers in your house for some reason. Uh, like
you live in my house for example. Actually I think
I've got more than four, but anyway, I think i've
got five. Anyway, let's say that you've got five computers
at your house. Then let's they got five computers in
my house, and that I have a file saved on
(47:31):
one of those computers. Then comes the fun part of
going to each computer and figuring out where it is.
The same problem. If you're using multiple cloud storage services,
you're gonna have to go and do search for each one.
That The benefit to it is that you can at
least do that search from one machine, as long as
that one machine can access each of the services you're using,
(47:52):
and if they all have web based access and you've
got a web browser, then you've got that problem solved,
even if it's not the most elegant solution, but still
means that you have to check each one of the
drives and figure out where you have it, and then
you might even fall into that same trap you had
before where you might have duplicate files. You might have
one instance on one drive and another instance on another drive.
(48:14):
So um yeah, that's that's gonna be a problem too,
is that if you use a lot of these services,
then you still have to have some sort of discipline
when it comes to data management. Maybe you only use
one for one particular type of file and use another
for a different one. In that way, at least you
reduce that confusion. Me what I think I'm gonna end
(48:35):
up doing is I'm going to pick one, and I
haven't decided which yet, although let's be honest, Google Drive
is probably the lead simply because I have a lot
of products that run Android, so you know, I'm kind
of locked into that in ecosystem already. But I haven't
completely decided yet. So let's say, you know, whichever one
(48:56):
I decide on, I'm going to eventually move all my things,
all of the things. I'm going to move all of
the things into that folder, and then I'm just gonna
get rid of the others, so that way I don't
have that issue. And that concludes this classic episode about
Google Drive. I hope you guys enjoyed it. If you
have any suggestions about future topics for tech Stuff, send
(49:18):
me an email. The address is tech Stuff at how
stuff works dot com, or pop on over to our
website that's tech Stuff podcast dot com. You'll find an
archive of all of our older shows. You'll find links
to our presence on social media. You'll find a link
to our online merchandise store. Every purchase you make there
goes to help the show, which we greatly appreciate. And
(49:40):
I will talk to you again and really soon. Text
Stuff is a production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works.
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