My understanding is that Dropbox doesn't have their own infrastructure but buys storage from Amazon S3. (At least this was true when they launched). The cheapest rate Amazon charges is 4.3 cents/GB-mo, which means for somebody who uses 50 GB, that's $2.15, not counting transfer fees (5 cents/GB uploaded) and servers, and development, etc.
Basically, Google's ability to scale up is its huge advantage over Dropbox.
I'm sorry, but as long as Google Drive's terms and conditions state that they can do whatever they want with any data you upload then they will never be used by me.
However, Dropbox's 2GB free storage is starting got look pretty stingy in 2014.
Heh heh, I have 11.5 GB from taking advantage of every freebie promo and test volunteer reward that they offered me about a couple of years ago. That's free for life.
If you listen to any interview with their execs. They tell you that they scan all data even google voice calls and voice mail. It's sliding right up to the creepy line without crossing it as one of them famously said. Nothing is free. If they weren't scanning it what would they gain, brownie points. That's not how they make their Billions.
The problem right now is that their idea and my idea of where the "creepy line" sits are pretty different.
The problem for the future is that I have no idea where the next guy(s) that run the company will think the "creepy line" lies, but they will still have all that years/decades personal data that they can use. Even if I were to trust Schmidt & Co. now, do I trust some unknown future CEO?
Yeah but - Dropbox doesn't scan your data and make use of that.
Is Dropbox's sole revenue source the fees paid premium users? If so, it would seem hard for them to compete with other cloud storage providers in terms of price per GB.
Steve tried to convince Dropbox that file storage was a feature and not a standalone product. Dropbox is going to learn that lesson the hard way as storage goes towards free over time
I would not be surprised if Apple doubles free iCloud storage to 10GB at WWDC
Meh. Unless it's at least 25GB free, with the option to purchase up to a TB, I would find it uninteresting and unimpressive.
This disregards the fact that storage of books, movies, music, photos and tv shows in iCloud is effectively unlimited. Having said that, I am not averse to more storage for Data & Documents in iCloud.
Go back to 1994. 1GB drives were huge. Basically the largest available, right?
Fast forward to 2004. 1TB drives had just come out. 1000x larger.
And now in 2014, we have… 4TB. Where are our Petabyte drives? What happened here? I mean, even 10TB seems like a meaningful thought, but nothing. Nada.
So Google being able to offer up this amount of storage seems insane. Think of the sheer number of drives! Think of the amount of physical space required! And I guess they assume the service will be used for at least a year per person, because terabyte drives are still $100.
They probably have triple redundancy on their data. 2 hot drives and 1 cold.
So if a 1TB drive costs $100, that's $100x3 = $300.
Over a 5 yr life of the drive, the racks, mounts, processors, hardware, facilities, bandwidth, etc probably cost at least as much, say $300/TB.
That's $600/TB over 5 yrs.
$10/month x 5 yrs = $600
Is this a break even effort for ecosystem growth?
This assumes that the consumer paying for Google Drive is the customer. Be assured that the paying customer is not the only revenue stream for Google Drive.
And as such, it will never be a commercial storage solution because it doesn't work the way that business need. You can't store random files and you can't share them with others users on any platform. iCloud should not be compared to Dropbox or any of the other storage solutions. iCloud is very useful but also very limited so most businesses chose DB or GD for collaboration purposes.
And by the way, DB does scan your files and they will report you if they find anything illegal and they also reserve the right to delete files for any reason they choose. Furthermore they use Google Analytics so Google knows everything about your use of Dropbox.
This disregards the fact that storage of books, movies, music, photos and tv shows in iCloud is effectively unlimited. Having said that, I am not averse to more storage for Data & Documents in iCloud.
This assumes that the consumer paying for Google Drive is the customer. Be assured that the paying customer is not the only revenue stream for Google Drive.
I like iCloud, but I miss the file storage capabilities Apple used to offer. This is another area where Apple brought a product to market, but abandoned it to let others take the mantle.
And as such, it will never be a commercial storage solution because it doesn't work the way that business need. You can't store random files and you can't share them with others users on any platform. iCloud should not be compared to Dropbox or any of the other storage solutions. iCloud is very useful but also very limited so most businesses chose DB or GD for collaboration purposes.
And by the way, DB does scan your files and they will report you if they find anything illegal and they also reserve the right to delete files for any reason they choose. Furthermore they use Google Analytics so Google knows everything about your use of Dropbox.
Apple also scans your files uploaded to iCloud and reserves the right to delete content they determine is objectionable. They don't define objectionable.
FWIW they all probably scan the files you upload. If you have something particularly sensitive or valuable I don't know that I'd consider Cloud storage to be the ideal locker.
You don't even need to search for little known court cases. Google is right upfront about what they collect and how it's treated. It's not a secret. https://support.google.com/a/answer/60762?hl=en
Scanning your documents is much different then what was asserted. The poster claimed that "Google wants to scan your data so they can take your ideas and make money off of them before you can" (emphasis mine).
Meh. Unless it's at least 25GB free, with the option to purchase up to a TB, I would find it uninteresting and unimpressive.
Apple should at least scale free storage based on the number of IOS and Macs I have active and registered to my iCloud. MBP, iMac, iPad 128GB, iPhone 64GB
Comments
My understanding is that Dropbox doesn't have their own infrastructure but buys storage from Amazon S3. (At least this was true when they launched). The cheapest rate Amazon charges is 4.3 cents/GB-mo, which means for somebody who uses 50 GB, that's $2.15, not counting transfer fees (5 cents/GB uploaded) and servers, and development, etc.
Basically, Google's ability to scale up is its huge advantage over Dropbox.
I'm sorry, but as long as Google Drive's terms and conditions state that they can do whatever they want with any data you upload then they will never be used by me.
However, Dropbox's 2GB free storage is starting got look pretty stingy in 2014.
Heh heh, I have 11.5 GB from taking advantage of every freebie promo and test volunteer reward that they offered me about a couple of years ago. That's free for life.
If you listen to any interview with their execs. They tell you that they scan all data even google voice calls and voice mail. It's sliding right up to the creepy line without crossing it as one of them famously said. Nothing is free. If they weren't scanning it what would they gain, brownie points. That's not how they make their Billions.
The problem right now is that their idea and my idea of where the "creepy line" sits are pretty different.
The problem for the future is that I have no idea where the next guy(s) that run the company will think the "creepy line" lies, but they will still have all that years/decades personal data that they can use. Even if I were to trust Schmidt & Co. now, do I trust some unknown future CEO?
Yeah but - Dropbox doesn't scan your data and make use of that.
Is Dropbox's sole revenue source the fees paid premium users? If so, it would seem hard for them to compete with other cloud storage providers in terms of price per GB.
IMHO, this is the best argument against Google's scanning/data collection practices and one that I've repeated many times in real life.
Think again.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2048680/dropbox-takes-a-peek-at-files.html
Yeah but what are Google's "no peek" prices? What's that? Oh, they don't offer that option. Oh, right.
LOL...somehow I don't think the people that post on this site are really part of Google's target market.
Wake me up when someone makes a tablet with 1TB internal storage
This disregards the fact that storage of books, movies, music, photos and tv shows in iCloud is effectively unlimited. Having said that, I am not averse to more storage for Data & Documents in iCloud.
This assumes that the consumer paying for Google Drive is the customer. Be assured that the paying customer is not the only revenue stream for Google Drive.
I wish Apple would bring back iDisk (or something similar).
Worked really well for me and I loved being able to host my website on it...
Wake me up when someone makes a tablet with 1TB internal storage
iCloud will never be multiplatform.
And as such, it will never be a commercial storage solution because it doesn't work the way that business need. You can't store random files and you can't share them with others users on any platform. iCloud should not be compared to Dropbox or any of the other storage solutions. iCloud is very useful but also very limited so most businesses chose DB or GD for collaboration purposes.
And by the way, DB does scan your files and they will report you if they find anything illegal and they also reserve the right to delete files for any reason they choose. Furthermore they use Google Analytics so Google knows everything about your use of Dropbox.
A comparison of the the privacy protections of iCloud, Google Drive, Dropbox and Skydrive
Any evidence of this ever happening? Where does this stuff come from?
From court cases where Google has acknowledged the practice. I will not do all the work for you, but here is one example concerning Gmail.
FWIW they all probably scan the files you upload. If you have something particularly sensitive or valuable I don't know that I'd consider Cloud storage to be the ideal locker.
You don't even need to search for little known court cases. Google is right upfront about what they collect and how it's treated. It's not a secret.
https://support.google.com/a/answer/60762?hl=en
From court cases where Google has acknowledged the practice. I will not do all the work for you, but here is one example concerning Gmail.
You don't even need to search for little known court cases. Google is right upfront about what they collect and how it's treated. It's not a secret.
https://support.google.com/a/answer/60762?hl=en
Scanning your documents is much different then what was asserted. The poster claimed that "Google wants to scan your data so they can take your ideas and make money off of them before you can" (emphasis mine).
Apple should at least scale free storage based on the number of IOS and Macs I have active and registered to my iCloud. MBP, iMac, iPad 128GB, iPhone 64GB