Google Drive Is Here, Google Docs Is Gone, Price Insane

Here is the Google Drive. Finally. And my worst thoughts about it came to life. But let's start with the good things: Google Drive is here. 5GB for free.

The bad imho is, it's integrated in your Docs storage. Nope wait. Google Docs is ousted. It's now Google Drive. The old Docs storage plan, with those good prices? Gone!
I don't know where to start. It's a disaster in my eyes.
Instead of having 20GB Docs storage for $5/year, you can now choose 25GB for $2.49/month(!). 30GB for GMail is separate. While this is not so bad, if you want a REAL Drive you need Terabytes of space.

The competition, Livedrive e.g., is offering UNLIMITED Backup space for 5 PCs and an additional 5TB(!) Drive to sync across all devices, including Android phones for $24.95/month.
The Google Drive offers 4TB for $199.95/month(!) with no unlimited backup space.

So all in all you could say, your old Google Docs Storage got more expensive now, with a client for PC and Mac. NO GNU/Linux at the moment. Livedrive offers at least SFTP and WebDAV for Linux-Users to have at least a virtual drive on their desktop.

And really, Google Docs is now Google Drive. No kidding. Docs is now a folder and file oriented system. Not like the Docs before. The Android-App is no more. It automatically updates to Google Drive basically to an file-manager with an editor. This is not as bad as it sounds, but if you got used to your Docs, this is totally different.

This is the new Google Docs Drive

I think there will be said a lot more in the next days and weeks. I really need to understand what just happened. For now one thing is sure: Google Drive will not be my place for cloud storage. It can't be. It's way, way too expensive, has no real backup, and is not usable with Linux the way most other services are.

I already believed it can't compete with real cloud storage services like Livedrive or Carbonite, but this is completely off the track. This is a better USB-Stick for monthly cost.

Related articles

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• Docs Storage Raised 5GB For Free. Google Drive Coming?

Docs Storage Raised 5GB For Free. Google Drive Coming?

Now we are talking. After some reports on Google+, I checked my Google Docs Storage and indeed it has been increased by 5GB for free.

This adds to the existing plan. I had a 20GB plan already. Now it's been raised to 25GB for Docs. The internet is a wild place and now speculations are all over that the Gdrive, or Google Drive, will start very soon. Some say even today on Tuesday.
It may indicate that there is something going on. Let's pray to the lords of Kobol, that Google isn't thinking about to just add more storage to docs storage and call that a "drive". We need sync and a fricking drive icon on our desktops (LINUX!) to get use out of it.
Box.com has it. Do you hear, Google? :)
[Via Google+]

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• More evidence that Google Drive could replace Google Docs

Blogger Now With Affiliate Ads. Not For All.

Nice to see progression with blogger.com on the affiliate ads. If your blog is eligible for those kind of ads, and you are writing a post, a new option appears in the post settings.

The problem is, you first need to have a US blog. Whatever this means. Do you need to live in the US, that means your Google AdSense account needs to be registered on a US-address? Or is it enough to blog in US English setting, intended for the US only?
Who knows. It's not easy to tell and apparently you can not see if or if not your blog is participating. Only if you write the post about a topic that fits to the ads, you will see this anyway. E.g. if you blog about a product like Motherboards, you could search affiliate links for that topic in that box and showing ads about that in the posting.

So it feels little bit weird, because we won't know if we are allowed to use it or not. And it's again not for all. That is not good. Many of bloggers that do hard work on writing articles, won't get any benefit from this new feature for one reason or another.

Come on, Google, be more transparent. Show if or if not a blog is allowed to use this new feature. And give a guideline what to do to get affiliate links on your blog.

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Google Drive: I'll Believe It, when I Use It

So many times before we heard about the start of the GDrive, Google Drive, or whatever it will be named. And it never was around the corner. This time, it looks much better. But still, is it even interesting anymore?

25 GB of space at Google (Photo credit: vscarpenter)

Last year I wrote about the awesome prices of the Docs storage. But if you need more storage, than the usual 20GB for $5 a year(!), you might be disappointed. Time is moving, and so are the need for storage. Remember those 40MB(yes, megabyte) hard drives? And when we said, that no one will need this much space at home. Yeah. Now we have 1 Terabyte minimum.

And with cloud storage there is one problem: You can't just buy another hard drive for $60 one time, and go ahead. You'll need to have unlimited space. And for a good, affordable monthly price. This is the real problem. I for myself need about 6 Terabyte at the beginning, to store all my data I have in the cloud and make it accessible for my devices. But every day there is more data that will need space.
I Just for recording the TV shows I watch on my receivers disk, it will take about 120GB per week! But not HD. That will take more. That's about 6.2TB a year! Hum...yeah.
And the amount of data we store will not get lower, it increases every year. But what if you have cloud space and your provider doesn't have a reasonable offer for more. Or even no offer at all?

These are the problems that need to be solved. As long as GDrive is not solving these, it's just another cloud space service with 1999 storage sizes for high prices. And before I believe the media hype, that GDrive killing all the other cloud services with it's own, I need to see their offer for unlimited space, for a price that knocks me off the socks.

Related articles

• The Best Personal Cloud Storage Choices for your Files (eogn.com)
• Google Drive: The Cloud Backup I want to see (zdnet.com)
• Google Drive Is Launching Next Week : 5 GB FREE On MAC, Windows, Android And iOS (thetechnologycafe.com)
• Google Drive to launch next week with companion Android app? (androidcentral.com)

Progress at Blogger.com Promises Google+ Integration

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In a Google+ post, the team at Blogger.com introduces a "new" interface and promises Google+ integration. But there is still a long way to go, while social networking is splitting between blogging and ... yes, and what?

In today's post, the team is hinting for the new design. In fact, the design doesn't differ much, the elements were introduced many weeks ago and continuously improved. Almost all the important features are now integrated. I ranted about the absence of the "Enclosure Links". But now it's back in the interface. So far so good. But the most important thing is still missing in most aspects: The Google+ integration.

Sure, you can share a post to Google+ after blogging with a requester opening. But not if you use the mobile client. Then this takes additional steps, which feels like 1998. Automatic sharing to Google+ must be coming. The problem is, that social networking, especially Google+ with its many features and awesome commenting crowd, is splitting blogging.
With every post I'm not sure where to open the topic. How can we solve this problem?

Posting on your blog, automatic share to Google+, and a full cross-commenting system where comments made on your blog appear in Google+ and vice-versa.
At least the comments-part was already confirmed from different Google employees as "coming soon". No real confirmations on the auto-share. I think this is an important step to let blogs being useful in the social hype.

Posting an important article to any social-network only, is not acceptable. You have no control over content, not nearly enough style options and layout features for postings, and the surrounding site is not yours. That makes not a good place to go for your customers or readers in the first line. having no own website or blog is like being homeless in the digital age. On the other side, benefits of social networks can be huge in terms of discovery, comments (actually people do participate there...weird) and sharing. We need to combine these two worlds.

I found myself posting more and more short status updates, instead of doing a regular post after some hours about a topic. And I found to blog much less than before. The content is gone forever, sucked into the big choke of social coughs. In a sea of words floating without getting to the surface ever again.
For the status updates I made a microblog, so I can still keep my content. But comments are made on Google+. Not at the blog site. And still, blogging rate has dropped dramatically here. We need to combine the best of both worlds by crossing the streams. Even if we shouldn't do it, it will safe our content :)

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