Google Drive and Dropbox

Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t Google Drive… 0.8 x Dropbox?

From Google:

Today, we’re introducing Google Drive — a place where you can create, share, collaborate, and keep all of your stuff. Whether you’re working with a friend on a joint research project, planning a wedding with your fiancé or tracking a budget with roommates, you can do it in Drive. You can upload and access all of your files, including videos, photos, Google Docs, PDFs and beyond.

From Dropbox:

Dropbox is a free service that lets you bring all your photos, docs, and videos anywhere. This means that any file you save to your Dropbox will automatically save to all your computers, phones and even the Dropbox website.

Dropbox also makes it super easy to share with others, whether you’re a student or professional, parent or grandparent. Even if you accidentally spill a latte on your laptop, have no fear! You can relax knowing that Dropbox always has you covered, and none of your stuff will ever be lost.

Invite your friends, family and teammates to any folder in your Dropbox, and it’ll be as if you saved that folder straight to their computers. You can send people links to specific files in your Dropbox too. This makes Dropbox perfect for team projects, sharing party photos with friends, or recording your band’s new album.

From that paragraph, I can only discern one difference – Google Docs. Dropbox doesn’t sync them, naturally. Though there are some services that can assist like cloudHQ.

The Verge offered a great rundown on both Drive and Dropbox, as well as 11 other file/data syncing services.

To keep things simple, here’s a quick take:

• Google Drive is Dropbox in the browser
• Not really a desktop thing (-1)
• It’s pricing is much cheaper (+1)
• No iOS app (-1)
• Powerful file sharing (+ ½)

Here’s my take. #

Drive is decent. It also works best on the web. With the ability to open up to 30 file types within the browser (yes, even a .psd when Photoshop isn’t on your system) and deep Google Docs integration (no-brainer), it will serve the daily web user well. However, Dropbox is, well, Dropbox. I think it’s gonna take a bit more than copying the abilities of another well-known service to make the mass to jump ship. After all, Dropbox has been around for some time now (5 years), it’s used by many (50 million+), and has one of the strongest APIs available. Not to mention, they too are innovating. It won’t be surprising if they come back in the next two months or so, and obliterate the browser + doc advantage Drive has on them.

Speaking of that, the question quickly arises. Why are you doing this Google? Why not give these syncing services a rest, keep calm and carry on? I can answer that one. It’s Google. That’s who they are, that’s what they do. Whatever service, meme, or platform that’s beginning to tickle the fancy of many, compels them to jump on – a natural reaction. Their most recent example is Google+.

So I’ll… #

Stick with my 50GB Dropbox plan. Drive is cool and all, but it’s also late to the file sharing and syncing game. There are enough services in the space – I’m content.

Nevertheless, it can come in handy if you live in Google Docs. I just wished Google had implemented Drive into Docs, call it an update, and call it a day. Scrap the whole announcement and new name thing. That’s so 2011.