Google, the Walmart of internet companies

[zukracer]

So anyone here seen or used the new Google Drive? Its Google's cloud drive offering and I gotta tell you its pretty slick. Ties into other Google products (gmail, picassa, apps, etc) and you start with 5GB. Amazon will also give you their Cloud Drive with 5GB of space free. Dropbox will give you 2GB but then you can expand via invites up to 16GB free....not bad except your friends have to actually sign up and create an account to get the 500MB of extra space. Apple also has their cloud drive service, pretty cool for what it is as well.

Here's the rub and why I say Google is the Walmart of internet companies.

Google gives you 5GB of cloud drive space free. Their Picassa product and Google Plus do not count images uploaded as long as you do it at their "web sized" format, which is still pretty huge. It only counts pix if you upload full/original format/size. Gmail gives you something obscene like 10GB of mail storage free. They also have the cheapest and largest online storage options, 25GB for $2.50/month OR 100GB for $5/month :0

Amazon Cloud also allows for growth but only really works for what you put up there in addition to your Amazon video/music purchases. They are cheaper at the low end, 20GB for $20/yr (1.66/month) but after that Google smokes them. 50GB for $50/yr (4.25/month) or 100GB for $100/yr (8.50/month) is a good bit over the mark set by Google AND its not linked into any other product offerings really.

Apple, Microsoft and Dropbox all have cloud drive options as well but all are more $$ than what Google offers. Of course if each has its own sorta niche use but at the end of the day Google has made their space cheaper and more of it available should you choose or need to go big, up to 16TB! They are doing this to try and get market share but really with so much free stuff and things that actually work, its pretty hard not to use them...unless of course your specific needs fit something else or you are just a loyalist to another brand.

So much like Walmart coming in and making things so much cheaper that the competition in the market can't compete unless they have their loyalist following.

And I'm not complaining I like me some inexpensive online storage Anyone else using the new drive or any of these other services? Likes/dislikes?

For anyone interested, some good reading here @ Apple iCloud vs Google vs Amazon Cloud Drive vs Dropbox vs Microsoft SkyDrive - Pocket-lint

 

[skydivr]

Interesting. But I'm kinda scared to let them store ANY of my stuff....they already use too much of it for marketing purposes...

 

[masterblaster]

me too, big brother, 1984 comes to fruition

Interesting. But I'm kinda scared to let them store ANY of my stuff....they already use too much of it for marketing purposes...

 

[zukracer]

every company listed above treats data the same way and does essentially the same stuff, some are maybe more stealthy in their process or less in your face with it. At least with Google you know what you are getting for the most part....they are highly scrutinized so little goes undetected with them.

The drive contents however are private as you make them. Its essentially not much different than uploading pix here, by doing so you allow the site to maintain them and any member the access to view them. The same google ads you might see on the drive web page are the same ones you might see here really. Otherwise the cloud drives are fairly secure, though with anything no where near 100% so. I would *NEVER* put something like my tax files or banking records or birth certificates up there...but it is definitely a place to store pics I dont want to loose and want to have access to from any point in the world, like ones of my kids I'd be more worried with a smaller company that flies under the radar, there's plenty out there for sure.

Figured with all the media hype and of course ads you see on these sites it might be worth a discussion here for folks. So far I have zero complaints with any of them, yes I did get accounts with all of them I have to say Dropbox seems the most functional for my work needs. I have over 5GB from them so far and I use it regularly for work. The Google drive links accounts and seems pretty quick to upload stuff.