Google Drive slashes paid storage prices, turning up the heat on rival Dropbox

124

Comments

  • Reply 61 of 97
    tallest skiltallest skil Posts: 43,388member
    Originally Posted by Phone-UI-Guy View Post

    It think it is just a symptom of most of the R&D moving to flash storage technology to support mobile. There were advancements in magnetic, but no where near as impressive. Flash went through the same huge growth cycle by gaining storage capacity, reducing physical size, increasing performance, and reducing price.


     

    And that’s certainly true. There’s a minimum physical size for a spinning disk’s magnetic sectors before the magnetism itself starts to interfere with neighboring sectors. There’s a minimum physical size for the heads within the disks and the space between them. And NAND (and all other forms of solid state) happen to have a far lower threshold for these physical limitations than all disks, leading to a higher density.



    But REALLY. Ten years and this is the best we can do? 

  • Reply 62 of 97
    belugabeluga Posts: 83member
    where is apple on this dammit? google is eating its lunch again... google had a 3 year lead with gmail vs a decent apple proposal (is there one today?) google had a 3 year lead with google docs vs iwork for icloud.. is it gonna be another 3 years until apple matches google on cloud storage?

    its one thing to wait and iron out all the details and come out with a more finished product but
    a. 3 years is a freaking long time
    b. if a user get used to sth its very hard to switch (see gmail)
    c. its cloud storage for crying out loud and apple has gazillion trillion in the bank

    make it happen dammit
  • Reply 63 of 97
    Meh. Unless it's at least 25GB free, with the option to purchase up to a TB, I would find it uninteresting and unimpressive.
    I think 10-20 max if they were to but a option to go 1 TB would be believable.
  • Reply 64 of 97
    hill60hill60 Posts: 6,992member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by tundraboy View Post

     

     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.


     

    I got 48 free GB for two years with a Samsung Galaxy SIII, when I got an S4 with the same offer it was not added to or extended, which seems like a bit of a scam.

     

    It runs out soon which is when I'll have to cut back I suppose.

  • Reply 65 of 97
    hill60hill60 Posts: 6,992member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Beluga View Post



    where is apple on this dammit? google is eating its lunch again... google had a 3 year lead with gmail vs a decent apple proposal (is there one today?) google had a 3 year lead with google docs vs iwork for icloud.. is it gonna be another 3 years until apple matches google on cloud storage?



    its one thing to wait and iron out all the details and come out with a more finished product but

    a. 3 years is a freaking long time

    b. if a user get used to sth its very hard to switch (see gmail)

    c. its cloud storage for crying out loud and apple has gazillion trillion in the bank



    make it happen dammit

     

    It took Google 5 or more years to catch up to Apple's iTools, let alone Apple's eWorld.

     

     

     

    Your statements are completely wrong, you've got things ass backwards.

     

    LOL at the guy who thinks Apple needs to follow Google.

  • Reply 66 of 97
    belugabeluga Posts: 83member

    please enlighten me

  • Reply 67 of 97
    emesemes Posts: 239member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Crosslad View Post





    I work for a local authority. None of our servers have a TB of storage, the servers are on average about 350gb and we have about 5 servers. How much data do you need to keep on your tablet?

    I don't. Who needs 41 megapixels in a camera (not knocking it btw, it's still an amazing camera), who needs a 64-bit smartphone, who needs to calculate pi to the 100,000,000,000,000th digit?

     

    It's because numbers sell.

  • Reply 68 of 97
    dickprinterdickprinter Posts: 1,060member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Gatorguy View Post





    You do realize the same source has a "Criticisms of Apple" page. image

     

    I don't feel that the Criticisms of Apple page is quite the same scope as the Criticisms of Google page. If anything, it is not as pertinent to this discussion as the Google page. And if you ask me, at first glance, most of Apple's criticisms listed on that page are because Apple is held to a higher standard than their tech peers, especially with the environment and labor issues.

     

    I, like many others here, avoid Google and their services as much as possible.

  • Reply 69 of 97
    belugabeluga Posts: 83member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by hill60 View Post

     

     

    It took Google 5 or more years to catch up to Apple's iTools, let alone Apple's eWorld.

     

     

     

    Your statements are completely wrong, you've got things ass backwards.

     

    LOL at the guy who thinks Apple needs to follow Google.


    if you havent noticed a lot of the areas that apple and google operate in overlap nowadays...

     

    My point is exactly that apple need not follow google.. it should lead

  • Reply 70 of 97
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Tallest Skil View Post

     

    I’ve been wondering something recently.

     

    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.


    Simple math assuming the average 100GB purchaser _uses_ 10GB (and median user is 2GB...pretty much what I see in my disk management Life).

     

    And retail for 4TB internal drives is ~$150. Google's price is wholesale.... your price is off by a factor of 3+.

     

    Figuring in 4TB RAID 5 and a Mirror... and likely a decent amount of compression to balance any anomalous usage spikes

     

    Let's say you want to service a BILLION users.

    That's 10GB per user  RAIDED/Mirrored out at 24GB.

    24GB*1B (is a lot of zeros)/4TB = 6Million Drives

     

    my back of the envelope price for the raw spindles (6 million 4TB if you're counting) is $750Million..

    Storage Array, networking, the army of technicians to wire up the cabinets, electrical, cooling... lets double that 1.5B 

    Seems like a lot of Initial spend.... oh wait  Google made 9.0BILLION last quarter....  Take it out of petty cash.

     

    A BILLION Users costs Google 1.50 cents in initial CapEx and OpEx/yr per user... 

     

    Google .49/1.99  = 25% Gross Margin...   is it profitable to Googles current stds.... yes.

    Year 2... plan on 10% disk failure (8 cents) and 10% growth (8 cents), 10% growth on costs (.83 cents per user)

    Google makes $1.05 Billion at 50% gross profit the 2nd year....

     

    Seems to make pretty simple business sense... if you have the capacity in the data center and your network.

  • Reply 71 of 97
    freerangefreerange Posts: 1,597member
    dasanman69 wrote: »

    Please, stop putting out FUD! Two totally different things. Dropbox IS NOT scanning your data but simply, and securely, building previews based on file extensions to give you easy access to previews of your own docs from your web browser without launching an app. Did you even read the article?
  • Reply 72 of 97
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by DroidFTW View Post

     

     

    Any evidence of this ever happening?  Where does this stuff come from?


    They read it from other "over zealous" AppleInsider users and since they don't bother fact checking, it becomes gospel.

  • Reply 73 of 97
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Gatorguy View Post





    People make up lots of stuff about Apple. I don't believe everything I hear and I'm sure you don't either.





    Oh wait, you were talking about Google. . .

     

    Why bother, the guy lives a double standard life and his posts pretty much admit it.  He chooses to ignore any wrongdoing by his chosen company and point the finger at anything that could make his company look bad.  You probably shouldn't engage those type of people in debate when they try that tactic.

     

    I think the proper response to Google lowering their prices should be "That's great - we as consumers win" because it will put pressure on other companies to drop their prices or come up with something different so they can differentiate themselves from Google.   It's called healthy competition and it does wonders for the industry.   Some people may say that Google is undercutting the competition to knock them out but let's be honest - if that happened, it would not be the first time it has ever happened and it would not be the last.  Every major company (Apple included) has done this at some point in their storied careers. 

  • Reply 74 of 97
    ewe7s8ewe7s8 Posts: 4member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by AdonisSMU View Post

     

    Google wants to scan your data so they can take your ideas and make money off of them before you can. That is in addition to advertising. 


     

    I have read many funny comments on this board -- but this might be the funniest yet (as a matter of fact, with Dilger's inane diatribes and the ridiculous comments of deluded fanbois, this site is funnier than The Onion)!

     

    PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE enlighten us what ideas the likes of "Tallest Skil" might have, that Google (or anyone else) could use to make money off!

  • Reply 75 of 97
    mstonemstone Posts: 11,510member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by zippy2shoes View Post

    I think the proper response to Google lowering their prices should be "That's great - we as consumers win" because it will put pressure on other companies to drop their prices or come up with something different so they can differentiate themselves from Google.   It's called healthy competition and it does wonders for the industry. 

    Actually not always. There is a difference between selling storage at a loss when it is not your main revenue generator versus, in the case of Dropbox, selling nothing but storage, of course they can't sell at a loss. It is the same argument made about Amazon undercutting the actual cost of ebooks. It is not real competition. It may look good for consumers until your only choice is either Google or MS. But Apple is no different in some respects, they give away their OS and apps to sell more hardware, just like Google gives stuff away for free to win your eyeballs on ad impressions.

  • Reply 76 of 97
    red oakred oak Posts: 1,089member
    Dropbox's valuation and potential IPO price just collapsed...

    Serves the VC's right for chasing the latest shiney object without thinking two moves ahead
  • Reply 77 of 97
    hill60hill60 Posts: 6,992member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Red Oak View Post



    Dropbox's valuation and potential IPO price just collapsed...



    Serves the VC's right for chasing the latest shiney object without thinking two moves ahead

     

    I suppose they still have the deal with Samsung to give 48GB for two years and the deal with HTC to give 23GB for two years.

     

    I don't know if Dropbox get paid for it or if they are hoping people will pay to keep their data at the end of the two years.

  • Reply 78 of 97
    dasanman69dasanman69 Posts: 13,002member
    freerange wrote: »
    Please, stop putting out FUD! Two totally different things. Dropbox IS NOT scanning your data but simply, and securely, building previews based on file extensions to give you easy access to previews of your own docs from your web browser without launching an app. Did you even read the article?

    And how do they detect file extensions if they're not scanning for them?
  • Reply 79 of 97
    chiachia Posts: 713member
    These people are even cheaper than Google:
    https://hubic.com/en/offers/

    €1 ($1.40) a month for 100 GB
    €10 a month for 10 TB compared to Google's $100 (€72) for the same capacity.
  • Reply 80 of 97
    tallest skiltallest skil Posts: 43,388member
    Originally Posted by TheOtherGeoff View Post

    And retail for 4TB internal drives is ~$150.


     

    When did THAT happen?

     

    Originally Posted by FreeRange View Post

    Dropbox IS NOT scanning your data

     

    Looks like that’s exactly what they’re doing.

     

    Did you even read the article? 


     

    Yeah, they’re looking at the documents.

Sign In or Register to comment.