Gdrive joins the free cloud storage providers. What will change?
After literally years of anticipation and news about the Google free cloud storage service called Gdrive, it has finally been released to the public. With every service Google introduces to the market, there is a lot of speculation about the impact it will have on the market and other providers of that particular service. In this case free cloud computing storage providers. So what does it mean for Microsoft’s Skydrive, Box, Dropbox, iCloud and others? Will the be out of business soon?
It does not look like that at the moment. Gdrive offers 5 GB of free storage, which is nice but nothing more than the competitors. It is automatically linked to your Google Docs account so if you are using Google Docs, this is nice. But the advantages over other providers stop here.
Google Drive can be installed on your computer of course and there is an Android app. But there is no iPhone and iPad app, and no Windows mobile app at the moment. For example Dropbox or Skydrive have all that. You can still access your data by a browser but once you have tried the Dropbox app you have a hard time going back.
Privacy issues may be a deal killer for Gdrive
But regardless of the above shortcomings the real problem with Gdrive seems to be the Gdrive Terms of Service. In the terms that you have to confirm before you get your free storage, you need to agree that even though you retain ownership of the material you store on Google’s services, Google has the right to use the material, including the right to display it in public. I don’t know about you, but this is a major problem from my point of view. I understand they would want to scan the files and use the contents for advertising but to have the right to display your files you store in their cloud in public? Whoa, that’s a bit much. As far as I’m concerned this makes Gdrive not suitable for any business use and we can assume it is aimed for personal use.
Maybe this means that Google will offer special service of cloud storage for business users with tighter privacy but it probably won’t be free.
To open your Gdrive account go to https://drive.google.com/.
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