Comments on: First look at Google Drive

By: Social Marketing & Digital Agency » Blog Archive

Social Marketing & Digital Agency » Blog Archive — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 10:57:31 +0000

[...] to services like iCloud and Dropbox and the media has been doing a great job analysing exactly what the service is and how it stacks up against what else is on the [...]

By: Michael Lewis

Michael Lewis — Fri, 04 May 2012 00:33:35 +0000

Thanks Andrew.
A great point you raised – the one of security for your documents.
Its important to remember a couple of key things:
1. When yoiu push “i agree” to the terms and conditions – know what you are agreeing to. The Google EULA (end user licence agreement) gives them, on first glance, free access to your files. This is obviously a concern for corporates, hence the policy we have in place within Telstra (and I am sure with many other compaines) that public, external cloud based storage is not allowed.
2. If, once you have read the agreement and are ok with your data potentially being accessed by the Cloud owner, then use it and enjoy it.
3. If you have concerns about your data security, I suggest you contact the provider and ask them. Alternatively, as suggested by a couple of people on here, there are physical drives you can purchase the store your data away from the computer, but you do lose some flexiblity under that option.

By: Kamran [Telstra Employee]

Kamran [Telstra Employee] — Wed, 02 May 2012 05:30:59 +0000

The timing of google drive launch and skydrive improvements was interesting, I have happily moved to skydrive myself from dropbox.

By: Michael Maniatakos (Employee)

Michael Maniatakos (Employee) — Wed, 02 May 2012 03:14:01 +0000

Would Telstra consider this any other cloud solution for its staff. Ability to store and access data from “a cloud” would boost productivity and save lots of trees in the process

By: Ricky Lee

Ricky Lee — Wed, 02 May 2012 02:20:38 +0000

Ummm Chris, Can you provide a link to this “EULA”?

By: Pranil Chandra (Employee)

Pranil Chandra (Employee) — Wed, 02 May 2012 00:32:54 +0000

I’ve been using Hotmail since and 1997 and have seen quite a few improvements with Hotmail and Windows Live in my time.
Recently, I started using Skydrive for my childrens school commitee and sporting meetings. While it has some great features, it is still unstable. Older versions of documents appear out of nowhere, comments to photo’s are not consistant and doubled up, archived data has disappeared – just to name a few problems.
Given these issues, I would not trust my most precious data (my family photo’s) on Skydrive or Google Drive. In a business sense this data requires the highest SLA target, and because the service’s are free there are no SLA’s. i.e. you can’t do squat if your data goes missing or is corrupted.
I still store my most important data on storage and backup I can control – hence I control the service level.

By: Andrew Davis

Andrew Davis — Tue, 01 May 2012 23:41:46 +0000

I’ve found the syncing via the local (in my case Mac) client to be good. Basically it “feels” similar to Dropbox.

The main reason for using it is if, like me, you are a heavy Google Apps user:
- Every Google Apps user automatically receives 5GB of free storage.
- Because it’s a core part of Google Apps, you don’t need to create new user accounts with a separate service provider.
- Additional storage is priced very competitively. (BTW – I’d be surprised if the above prices are in AUD. Google product pricing has always only been in USD.)
- Powerful sharing and access controls are built in.

I can’t comment on the privacy and security issues. (In my opinion that’s an issue that extends to all cloud services providers, and I view Google as being as trustworthy as Microsoft or Dropbox.)

By: Vijay (Employee)

Vijay (Employee) — Tue, 01 May 2012 23:31:24 +0000

Make sure you upgrade to free 25 GB (For those who are eligible) ASAP. This is a limited period offer from Microsoft.

By: Paul

Paul — Tue, 01 May 2012 23:26:02 +0000

With respect to Skydrive and DropBox and rights to files – whilst they aren’t as aggressive with thier EULA, they are subject to the Patriot act – if you’re really concerned about rights, ensure the content is not stored on US territory.

By: Maurice

Maurice — Tue, 01 May 2012 22:44:52 +0000

I had a look at Microsoft’s cloud computing about 12 months ago. My need was to be able to access the OneNote app and OneNote repository from any location.
I found the Microsoft cloud to be too clunky – too slow with cut-down versions of apps. The whole web app thing was just a pain.
My cloud is now a 64GB SD card which I carry in my wallet. It gets sync’d to NAS from time to time when I am at home. And with a Win7 tablet, I don’t need to find a connection to access my files.