It’s official, after weeks (months/years) of rumor and speculation GDrive has arrived and boy is it, well, cheap. And big, its big and its cheap. So far, that is the earthshattering news as far as I can see. Google delivered a DropBox alternative that is one quarter the cost (100 gigabytes for $4.99 per month vs. $19.99 for Dropbox) and scales up to a massive 16 terabytes vs. 1 terabyte as far as I can tell for Dropbox. So, watch as prices across the board begin to drop even more. I have to believe that Dropbox is feeling the heat, but with their market cap, I’m not shedding a tear.
This is certainly great news for consumers — who can get another 5GB free and for only $4.99 a month store and access virtually all their data. And there is the coolness of a seamless experience with Google Docs and Google+.
But I guess I was just expecting more. Like, I don’t find syncing (it may be there, I just can’t find it), or back up. I’m also not just a little concerned about housing all my eggs in one big, cheap Google basket. Instead of flexibility, I see enormous lock in. Instead of seamless, I’m concerned about privacy.
Like I said, I like the price pressure this puts on those selling storage for a living, but I’ll stick with my baby (ownCloud) for its flexibility, use of my own storage (or other storage that I choose) and open standards and APIs.
The service is not yet available for me so I can´t test. :-/ But don’t worry, I’ll test it when I can and report back.
