Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works and I Heeart Radio and I love
Speaker 1: all things tech and it's time for another classic episode.
Speaker 1: This episode originally published on May twenty three, two thousand twelve,
Speaker 1: and Chris and I decided to talk about Google Drive.
Speaker 1: It is called tech stuff goes for a Google Drive. Now,
Speaker 1: at the time that we recorded this, How stuff Works
Speaker 1: was not using Google Drive as a true storage, cloud computing,
Speaker 1: you know platform. We we had it personally, but we
Speaker 1: weren't using it as a company. That would change over
Speaker 1: the years. How stuff Works would adopt Google Drive at
Speaker 1: one point, and now we're in another transition phase, which
Speaker 1: is a lot of fun. I'm looking at my producer Tari,
Speaker 1: who is agreeing with me about how fun it is
Speaker 1: to try and transfer from one storage system to another.
Speaker 1: She's she's giving me a big I think it's a
Speaker 1: thumbs up. There's definitely there's definitely a finger up. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna say it's a thumb So I hope you guys
Speaker 1: enjoy this conversation. About Google Drive, and I'll talk to
Speaker 1: you again in just a moment. So today tech stuff fans,
Speaker 1: we're all gonna go on a little Google Drive. O. Cool.
Speaker 1: We're gonna talk about those robotic cars that don't need
Speaker 1: drivers except you know, when they're sitting in the seat
Speaker 1: and they watch the car where you're on somebody else. No,
Speaker 1: that's that's not what my notes are on. I was
Speaker 1: talking about Google Drive, you know, the cloud storage Google
Speaker 1: Drive announced on a Well, this will be a fun podcast.
Speaker 1: We're gonna see what our notes show. Um. No, really,
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about Google Drive today and the day
Speaker 1: we're recording this podcast, just in case you guys are curious.
Speaker 1: I know that you'll be listening to it quite a
Speaker 1: while afterwards because we record so early and that ants.
Speaker 1: But it's April the day we're recording this, so it's
Speaker 1: just three days after Google finally officially announced and launched
Speaker 1: Google Drive. Right. It was sort of a one of
Speaker 1: those closely guarded secrets like that everyone knew about it,
Speaker 1: and everyone knew about like the iPad for two years
Speaker 1: before it was released. Right. Yeah, people have been talking
Speaker 1: about Google having a cloud storage service for for a
Speaker 1: couple of years now, so this was and even Google
Speaker 1: made reference to that. But before we really get into
Speaker 1: what Google Drive is, we should probably talk about what
Speaker 1: cloud storage is in general and why it's important. Uh,
Speaker 1: cloud storage is pretty it's a pretty simple concept. The
Speaker 1: idea is that you can store data on servers in
Speaker 1: the cloud. So you're talking about using someone else's computers
Speaker 1: to store your information, and you can access the information
Speaker 1: over the Internet using some sort of interface, usually web based,
Speaker 1: And they call it the cloud, of course, because the
Speaker 1: Internet is a nebulous group of machines and it's just
Speaker 1: sort of out there all is changing like a cloud.
Speaker 1: So yeah, so, and and the idea being that it's
Speaker 1: also kind of like a cloud in the sense that
Speaker 1: you can access it from any machine that has that
Speaker 1: Internet capability. Right. It may require a special app depending
Speaker 1: upon the type of cloud storage. Uh, because not everything
Speaker 1: is web based. There are a lot of different desktop
Speaker 1: clients that you can have that will allow you to
Speaker 1: store information to a cloud drive. So it lives on
Speaker 1: your computer's desktop as if it were a regular file folder. Right,
Speaker 1: So you think of your your regular hard drive folders
Speaker 1: that you would go into to look at various files,
Speaker 1: like you might store all your pictures in a in
Speaker 1: a pictures folder, and all your videos and a videos folder,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. Um, a cloud storage drive might
Speaker 1: show up on your desktop as if it were a
Speaker 1: regular folder on your computer, but instead of living on
Speaker 1: your computer, the information gets sent over the Internet to
Speaker 1: a a remote machine and it's stored on that machine.
Speaker 1: And there is no identifier that links that particular file
Speaker 1: to you as a user, a registered user of that service.
Speaker 1: And uh, in fact, when I say it lives on
Speaker 1: one machine, that's not entirely true. Almost every cloud service,
Speaker 1: in fact, every reputable cloud service out there uses redundant
Speaker 1: measures so that the file is on several different machines
Speaker 1: in case one machine fails. I'm real sorry, I only
Speaker 1: had one machine and it went down. Yeah, that would
Speaker 1: not go over so well. Uh Jester's cloud service, Jester's
Speaker 1: cloud service. Yeah, there's never really been up on that whole.
Speaker 1: I think I need to I think I need to
Speaker 1: register that domain now, Chester's cloud service. We got hair
Speaker 1: a cumula nimbus um. So the Yeah, the idea is
Speaker 1: that obviously that you would be able to offload storage
Speaker 1: from your native device, especially if you are one of
Speaker 1: those people who has lots of different devices, and you
Speaker 1: want to be able to access the same information no
Speaker 1: matter which device you're using. Because in the old days,
Speaker 1: back before a cloud storage, a couple of years ago, yeah,
Speaker 1: not that long ago, you you only had a few
Speaker 1: different options. You could save something to a physical medium,
Speaker 1: so a disk for example, compact disc or a floppy
Speaker 1: disc way back in the day, or a thumb drive
Speaker 1: something like that, and then you could pourt that over
Speaker 1: to another device, pull it up from the physical medium,
Speaker 1: and then work on it that way, save it back
Speaker 1: to the physical medium, and then go back, and you
Speaker 1: know it. It was a little cumbersome. It also meant
Speaker 1: that you would often end up with lots of duplicate
Speaker 1: copies of a particular file, and if people made changes,
Speaker 1: then you had to figure out, all right, which one
Speaker 1: of these copies has the most recent, most relevant changes,
Speaker 1: and then I have to get rid of all the
Speaker 1: others or else I'm going to confuse them all. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you have to go through and you you end up
Speaker 1: looking at creation dates and when things were modified. Wait,
Speaker 1: that was done at nine, Okay, I can get rid
Speaker 1: of that one. And it takes forever, and and it's
Speaker 1: particularly difficult if you have more than one collaborator, Right,
Speaker 1: So if Chris and I were working on a document,
Speaker 1: it would be frustrating for us to try and and
Speaker 1: we're both working on copies of a document, we're both
Speaker 1: making changes, be very frustrating to cohlate those changes and
Speaker 1: figure out you know which ones are relevant and which
Speaker 1: ones are the most recent. Uh, and may very well
Speaker 1: be that a change I make makes a later change
Speaker 1: that Chris makes irrelevant. So the idea behind cloud storage
Speaker 1: is it's not and it's not always connected, but there's
Speaker 1: a lot of work around collaboration in cloud storage, so
Speaker 1: that if you have multiple people who need access to
Speaker 1: a particular file, you are able to share that file
Speaker 1: across several instances, and you might even be able to
Speaker 1: have multiple people work on that file at the same time,
Speaker 1: and those changes will be reflected more or less in
Speaker 1: real time for each person. So that way, if Chris
Speaker 1: Word did make a change to a sentence within that file,
Speaker 1: I could actually see him making that more or less
Speaker 1: in real time. This is particularly true with Google Service,
Speaker 1: but because Google Drive has been very tightly integrated with
Speaker 1: Google Docs, in fact, it's kind of superseded Google Docs
Speaker 1: in a way, but other services also offer similar features.
Speaker 1: Um And just to clear things up, my my joke
Speaker 1: about a couple of years ago, of course, the cloud
Speaker 1: is uh much older than that. We've been using variations
Speaker 1: on cloud services for many years now. Uh. In fact,
Speaker 1: I don't think I think it really proceeds labeling things
Speaker 1: as cloud, which is really sort of a convenient marketing
Speaker 1: term for for services such as these. Um, it gives
Speaker 1: you it when people mention the cloud. It basically serves
Speaker 1: as a a hint to say, hey, the materials or
Speaker 1: software is being stored on servers on the Internet, not
Speaker 1: on your computer. So it's it's sort of a short
Speaker 1: marketing shorthand for these services. But yeah, I mean we've
Speaker 1: talked about Google Docs many times. I mean it predates
Speaker 1: the beginning of our podcast, so um And there were
Speaker 1: many services using those kinds of uh, those kinds of
Speaker 1: technologies before, but in recent in recent years, there have
Speaker 1: been several services that take advantage of cloud storage. Specifically, um,
Speaker 1: not simply to store that the software as a service,
Speaker 1: you know, or or the documents that you say in
Speaker 1: Google Docs, um, but to upload and download your own
Speaker 1: file so that you don't have to use a physical medium.
Speaker 1: You don't have to worry about losing that that flash
Speaker 1: drive you carry in your pocket or your bag. Um,
Speaker 1: you don't have to walk a disk from one place
Speaker 1: to another or worry about it if you want to, say,
Speaker 1: work on a graduate school assignment on your lunch break
Speaker 1: at work. I don't know anyone who would have done
Speaker 1: that at how stuff works, except maybe me co fle
Speaker 1: of years ago. Or you just happen to have like
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of really powerful magnets nearby and you
Speaker 1: don't want to use magnetic storage. Turn it. I had
Speaker 1: my flash drive in my pocket when I went for
Speaker 1: the m R. I I was thinking. I was thinking
Speaker 1: of the old old floppy disk days. I actually did
Speaker 1: lose data on a floppy disk because uh, floppy disk
Speaker 1: had a little bit of a close encounter with a
Speaker 1: magnet and that was enough to ruin it. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: but um yeah, I mean these these services were being
Speaker 1: marketed specifically as a hey, you can store stuff here,
Speaker 1: and and um, the services in question, many of them
Speaker 1: came from from the little guys. We're not talking about
Speaker 1: Apple or Google or Facebook or Amazon or Microsoft. These
Speaker 1: were all independent vendors and they would offer. They still
Speaker 1: do offer a free tier of service for a small
Speaker 1: amount of storage, and then you could upgrade for a
Speaker 1: certain price per month you could get more storage, and
Speaker 1: for more than that you get more storage, and they
Speaker 1: they basically would work that out in businesses. If you
Speaker 1: really needed a whole lot of cloud storage, um, you
Speaker 1: know you could do that. But gradually the big players
Speaker 1: have been getting into the game. And that's why, uh,
Speaker 1: everybody has been expecting Google to do it, because I mean, hey,
Speaker 1: if anybody's got server storage and data centers, it's Google.
Speaker 1: It turns out that storage is relatively inexpensive, so very
Speaker 1: very inexpensive over the last few years. So so for
Speaker 1: a business to enter into that and just purchase a
Speaker 1: lot of different servers specifically to save information from from users, uh,
Speaker 1: it's not as big a barrier as some other forms
Speaker 1: of internet based businesses. However, it does mean that you
Speaker 1: have to create these systems in place for things like security.
Speaker 1: You need to have you know, the important things for
Speaker 1: cloud computing involved security accessibility. So you want to make
Speaker 1: sure that whatever your system is, it's easy to access
Speaker 1: on multiple platforms. So that means you want people to
Speaker 1: be able to access it via PC, mac, smartphone, tablet.
Speaker 1: Lots of different devices can connect to the Internet now,
Speaker 1: so you want to be able to give your users
Speaker 1: the freedom to be able to access the information over
Speaker 1: as many of platforms as possible. You know, the more
Speaker 1: convenient your services, the more valuable it is to the customer.
Speaker 1: So so security and accessibility and uh, just that that
Speaker 1: whole accessibility slash convenience and just the whole idea of
Speaker 1: giving a certain tier for free so that you you
Speaker 1: show people how valuable the services now and and we
Speaker 1: should clear this up. Cloud storage is not necessarily all
Speaker 1: about backing up your data, although people have used it
Speaker 1: for that kind of purpose. It's really more about, well,
Speaker 1: there's certain documents or certain files that you may want
Speaker 1: to have stored in the cloud because you want to
Speaker 1: have easy access across multiple devices. You may want to
Speaker 1: share that with other people, and it's a lot easier
Speaker 1: to do that when it's on a web based drive
Speaker 1: than it would be on your own computers. So let's
Speaker 1: say that I've shot a video and I've got this
Speaker 1: video living on my computer, emailing that video out to
Speaker 1: all the different people I want to see it. Uh,
Speaker 1: maybe I don't want to upload it to something like YouTube.
Speaker 1: Maybe I just want to send that directly to a
Speaker 1: few people. Well, for example, what if you were trying
Speaker 1: to preview a video with the people you were working
Speaker 1: collaborating with it on right exactly, you're not ready to
Speaker 1: make it public? Yeah, yeah, you might need to still
Speaker 1: do some edits. You may you may just be looking
Speaker 1: at this with your friends and say, just just doesn't
Speaker 1: feel snappy enough. Do you have any suggestions? So in
Speaker 1: that case, yeah, you wouldn't want to necessarily upload to YouTube.
Speaker 1: I mean, you could upload YouTube and make it private
Speaker 1: and then send out the link. But but if you
Speaker 1: just would rather skip that stuff and and just keep
Speaker 1: it in pre production mode, um, then a cloud drive
Speaker 1: would be very useful. You could send out, you could
Speaker 1: share the link to that file within your cloud drive,
Speaker 1: and then other people could go to your cloud drive
Speaker 1: and view that one particular file without having access to
Speaker 1: anything else that's in your cloud drive. So all they
Speaker 1: would get is access to whatever file you you permitted
Speaker 1: them access to. Now you might be able to set
Speaker 1: some permissions on files so that they are publicly available.
Speaker 1: Would means that anyone who could visit your drive would
Speaker 1: be able to see that particular file. But in most cases,
Speaker 1: I think people just have special permissions for particular folks
Speaker 1: and then and of course you could always say that
Speaker 1: where only you have access to it, there's no need
Speaker 1: to you know, you're not forced to collaborate. Right, So
Speaker 1: those are the that's the basics around cloud drives. And
Speaker 1: one of the reasons why I think cloud drives are
Speaker 1: getting more important is that you're starting to see, right
Speaker 1: about the time we're recording this podcast, in particular, you're
Speaker 1: starting to see some some devices come out besides ones
Speaker 1: that come from a company company that rhymes with shmapple
Speaker 1: that that don't have expandable memory as a feature. So
Speaker 1: so in other words, there's no slot for you to
Speaker 1: put a memory card into. Oh well, we've already talked
Speaker 1: about ultra books, UM, which don't have in general, don't
Speaker 1: have optical drives. You know they they save space, save
Speaker 1: energy UM by not having that. And you know where
Speaker 1: you have a limited amount of storage on board, so
Speaker 1: you could you was something like a flash drive or
Speaker 1: a portable drive where you have a connection, um, but
Speaker 1: you you do need something to store files on otherwise
Speaker 1: you know, you're really not going to be able to
Speaker 1: create stuff. Well, although granted most ultrabooks probably have significantly
Speaker 1: more storage on board than your typical at least you're
Speaker 1: free tier of cloud storage out there. Oh yes, definitely.
Speaker 1: But things like smartphones, I mean, here's an example. I'll
Speaker 1: give a real world example, because again this is a
Speaker 1: recording this and this phone was just announced on T
Speaker 1: Mobile was the HTC one S. It's an Android based
Speaker 1: phone running ice cream Sandwich. It has sixteen gigabytes on
Speaker 1: board memory. Alright, sixteen gigs on board memory. No flash
Speaker 1: drive knows, no smart card drive at all, so you
Speaker 1: can't add more memory to it. That's sixteen gigs is
Speaker 1: all you get. However, ht C one S also comes
Speaker 1: with a trial period with Dropbox, which is another cloud
Speaker 1: based storage system. And we'll talk more about Dropbox a
Speaker 1: little bit later in this podcast. So in this case,
Speaker 1: you're talking about a smartphone that is encouraging you to
Speaker 1: use cloud based storage rather than some sort of physical media.
Speaker 1: So that way you have this this your information is
Speaker 1: backed up into the cloud. And theoretically, when you are
Speaker 1: ready to upgrade your phone or switch phones, or maybe
Speaker 1: you lose your phone you have to get a new phone,
Speaker 1: you would still have access to that information because it
Speaker 1: exists on the cloud, not on a physical device in
Speaker 1: your hand. I mean it's it's on a physical device,
Speaker 1: it's just that physical device belongs to some other company.
Speaker 1: So that's one of the other reasons why cloud storch
Speaker 1: is so important is that we're starting to see manufacturers
Speaker 1: kind of offload features onto the cloud so that they
Speaker 1: don't include them in the phone itself. It helps a
Speaker 1: little bit with phone design because it means that you
Speaker 1: don't need to build in that feature. You can actually
Speaker 1: make your phones slimmer and sleeker. I mean, Apple has
Speaker 1: been doing this for ages, but other companies are starting
Speaker 1: to do the same sort of thing. Now, that's enough
Speaker 1: about cloud storage in general, I think, unless is there
Speaker 1: anything else that we need to talk about. There was
Speaker 1: one other thing I didn't want to uh to pass
Speaker 1: over it too much is UM. And this is something
Speaker 1: we've visited several times too, is the aspect of privacy. UM.
Speaker 1: You know, a couple of years ago when we were
Speaker 1: talking about this UM, you know, when we was starting
Speaker 1: to become a public topic. You know, hey, what is
Speaker 1: cloud storage? What it was cloud computing? UM? You know,
Speaker 1: people didn't really get that and then when you explain it,
Speaker 1: they'd start thinking about the documents that you would store
Speaker 1: up there and privacy, what if somebody hacks in? Um.
Speaker 1: I think it's obvious at this point that the convenience,
Speaker 1: UM and accessibility of cloud storage has made it we
Speaker 1: were we've gone so far now that I don't think
Speaker 1: we're going to go back. Um, but it's obviously. I
Speaker 1: just think it's interesting to note that at this point
Speaker 1: we are you know, there are things that we look at,
Speaker 1: you know, whether this this particular company is more uh
Speaker 1: likely to have of good security and privacy then the
Speaker 1: other company. But um, yeah, that's it's the security of
Speaker 1: these cloud storage uh services has become sort of a given.
Speaker 1: Oh well, you know, if they're going to offer this,
Speaker 1: they better be offering security because I'm going to use
Speaker 1: the service, and you know, that's something I look for
Speaker 1: before I do that, so that that doesn't even seem
Speaker 1: that seems like a given now when before people are
Speaker 1: going I don't know if I want to do this
Speaker 1: or not. Yeah, we can talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: Google's approach to privacy and security. In fact, we will
Speaker 1: have to because there is a controversy that we we
Speaker 1: will have to address. But before we do that, let's
Speaker 1: get into the basics of Google Drive. So it is
Speaker 1: built directly into Google Docs. Now, so Google Docs. The
Speaker 1: if you were to open up a Google Docs account,
Speaker 1: so which is just your regular Google account, that's what
Speaker 1: it's attached to. So if you have a Google account, congratulations,
Speaker 1: you have a Google Docs account. You can go to
Speaker 1: Google Docs and create a document, whether that's a word document,
Speaker 1: word being, word processing document not where it is in
Speaker 1: Microsoft Word, but a word processing document, presentation spreadsheet, you know,
Speaker 1: all the basic types of office documents. Google has the
Speaker 1: those as features. If you were to create one and
Speaker 1: save it, it it would save it into your Google Drive
Speaker 1: account and you would automatically get the the base free tier,
Speaker 1: which for Google Drive is five gigabytes of free storage.
Speaker 1: And the nice thing about this is that that doesn't
Speaker 1: count any of the documents in your Google Docs, so
Speaker 1: it doesn't know I didn't know that. That's interesting. That's
Speaker 1: good to know. Uh the Now, what you can also
Speaker 1: do is you can download a client onto your desktop
Speaker 1: that allows you to drag and drop files from your
Speaker 1: computer into your Google Drive, so that you can easily
Speaker 1: port over if you've got say, uh, photo album on
Speaker 1: your computer and you like the photo album and you
Speaker 1: want to keep it, but you don't really want it
Speaker 1: taking up space on your local hard drive. You could
Speaker 1: copy it, or not copy it, but move it over
Speaker 1: to your Google Drive and it would store there. It
Speaker 1: would have you have a folder within your Google Drive
Speaker 1: where you could access that, and you could access it
Speaker 1: with any web connected device that at least any web
Speaker 1: connected device, either through the web system or depending on
Speaker 1: the device, you might have a dedicated app that would
Speaker 1: let you access it. So for example, Google Drive, you
Speaker 1: can do that on PCs and max uh and you
Speaker 1: can do it on Android phones. And they're working on
Speaker 1: the recording of this podcast. They were working on an
Speaker 1: iOS app so that you would be able to access
Speaker 1: it easily through your iPhone or iPod touch or iPad.
Speaker 1: And they also, from what I understand, I did see
Speaker 1: an article on a Linux website the other day that
Speaker 1: was quite upset that there was not compatibility built in
Speaker 1: for Linux as in as in a and a dedicated application.
Speaker 1: From what I understand, they're working too. Of course, you know,
Speaker 1: if you're using Linux now and and you've probably already
Speaker 1: tried to use your drive with it, if you're you know,
Speaker 1: a Google customer. Um, you can of course use the
Speaker 1: web version. Um. But but they're working on a dedicated app.
Speaker 1: From what I understand, that's that's the nice thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: even if your your device doesn't have a dedicated app,
Speaker 1: you can still access Google Drive through the web portion,
Speaker 1: like you open up a browser and you can go
Speaker 1: to Google Drive that way. It's not quite as convenient,
Speaker 1: it's not as user friendly. Uh So, I mean that's
Speaker 1: why everyone wants the app, because then you know, you
Speaker 1: bypass that step of having to go through the web.
Speaker 1: It's just like having an app on your phone that
Speaker 1: access a web based email client, so that you don't
Speaker 1: actually have to open up a browser and navigate to
Speaker 1: the email. You just open up the app and there
Speaker 1: you are. Same sort of thing. Chris and I have
Speaker 1: more to say about Google Drive, but before we do,
Speaker 1: let's take a quick break to thank our sponsor. Well,
Speaker 1: there's some other interesting aspects that are unique to to
Speaker 1: the Google Cloud Drive. Because there's you know, like we said,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of different companies out there that
Speaker 1: offer comparable services, but they don't all have the same
Speaker 1: feature set. One of the things that sets Google apart
Speaker 1: is no surprise search. So let's say that you have
Speaker 1: a lot of files in your Google Drive. Let's say
Speaker 1: let's say that you are one of the people who
Speaker 1: you're you've got to upgrade your account because you've got
Speaker 1: a lot of data, and you've got lots of different
Speaker 1: kinds of files. You've got picture files, videos, text documents,
Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff, and scanned documents, so maybe
Speaker 1: PDFs or other forms of scanned documents. You have it
Speaker 1: all in your Google Drive, and then one day you
Speaker 1: need a specific file and for the life that you
Speaker 1: can't remember what folder you saved it in, and you've
Speaker 1: got so many folders in this drive, it's going to
Speaker 1: take you forever to find it. This is something that
Speaker 1: does not happen on an in free one basis at
Speaker 1: Shase Strickland Um, because I am very very good at
Speaker 1: filing things away safely, so safely I will never find
Speaker 1: them again. So Google Search is built into Google Drive,
Speaker 1: and they have gone so far as to start developing
Speaker 1: recognition software. So that let's say that you've scanned in
Speaker 1: a lot of documents. Maybe you've got some old documents
Speaker 1: that are important to you, perhaps they're old family journals,
Speaker 1: and you scanned the pictures and you put them into
Speaker 1: your Google Drive, and you think, there's this great document
Speaker 1: that my grandfather wrote that is pertinent to this blog
Speaker 1: post i'm posting. It would be awesome if I if
Speaker 1: I posted a picture of that page, but gosh, I
Speaker 1: can't remember where I saved it. Well, the image recognition software,
Speaker 1: it actually can scan the scanned documents and look for text.
Speaker 1: So if you type in an UM string, like you
Speaker 1: know that your grand father wrote about I'll give a
Speaker 1: real life example. Let's say my grandfather wrote about a
Speaker 1: massive tornado that completely devastated Gainesville, Georgia, which is true,
Speaker 1: really did happen. My grandfather was in a working in
Speaker 1: a mill at a time, and it ripped the roof
Speaker 1: off the mill. My grandfather was very lucky to get out.
Speaker 1: Um So, let's say that he wrote this great article
Speaker 1: about it, and I had scanned it in I could
Speaker 1: type in Gainesville tornado in my Google uh search for
Speaker 1: for the Google Drive, and it's going to actually look
Speaker 1: and scan the the physical documents, the ones that are
Speaker 1: just image files really and return those as well, which
Speaker 1: is kind of cool. It's not just scanning the text
Speaker 1: in your documents and scanning the images. They're also working
Speaker 1: on adding in the image recognition software that you can
Speaker 1: find in in products like Google Goggles. So with Google Goggles,
Speaker 1: you can hold up a smartphone with a camera to
Speaker 1: a particular kind of objects, sometimes like a landmark or whatever,
Speaker 1: and Google Goggles will use recognition software to try and
Speaker 1: identify what that is. Same sort of thing. Let's say
Speaker 1: that you've taken a bunch of pictures of the Washington
Speaker 1: Monument and then you think, oh, there's this great picture
Speaker 1: of the Washington Monument I want to use, and I
Speaker 1: don't remember where I put it. You could search Washington Monument,
Speaker 1: and that image recognition software will include any images that
Speaker 1: Google identifies as the Washington Monument uh and pulls it
Speaker 1: back even if you didn't title the picture that so
Speaker 1: the picture could be titled something different. It couldn't just
Speaker 1: have the date or some random string of letters and numbers.
Speaker 1: But because that image recognition software is part of Google Search,
Speaker 1: it can pull that up as well, which is a
Speaker 1: really powerful tool. Now, Google does stress that both the
Speaker 1: image recognition software and the the scanning of of scanned
Speaker 1: files software both of that those technologies are in their
Speaker 1: early phases and may not work flawlessly, so uh, you know,
Speaker 1: mileage may vary essentially is what comes out of that.
Speaker 1: But that that is a differentiator is that you've got
Speaker 1: this amazing search tool. It turns out Google knows a
Speaker 1: thing or two about search. They've picked up a couple
Speaker 1: of tricks that that's really cool. They needed to work
Speaker 1: on them. Yeah, no, they've they've got some good some
Speaker 1: good work there, and then they're also working there's there's
Speaker 1: all the collaborative features that you would get with Google Docs.
Speaker 1: So that's included with Google Drive. So assuming that people,
Speaker 1: uh you know that you give access to certain files
Speaker 1: to people, they should be able to make edits and
Speaker 1: everything they're working on, including some other features as well.
Speaker 1: They've actually opened up the platform and they've created an
Speaker 1: API for for companies to add in their own features,
Speaker 1: so extensions and things. So you might be vocation programming interface. Yes,
Speaker 1: so you might be able eventually to do things like
Speaker 1: send facts from your Google Drive to a fax machine
Speaker 1: or to actually have edit videos with in your Google
Speaker 1: Drive itself, so you're not just letting people view a video,
Speaker 1: but perhaps even edit videos within the drive using this
Speaker 1: third party application. But they're the the possibilities are nearly endless. Yeah.
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, they have already made partnerships
Speaker 1: with some of these companies that that Jonathan is alluding
Speaker 1: to UM for the launch of Google Drive, and you
Speaker 1: can go. You can actually find it pretty easily when
Speaker 1: you go into your Google account that they have these uh,
Speaker 1: these applications that are ready to take advantage of this
Speaker 1: UM And as a matter of fact, um, there is
Speaker 1: ah some of them have UM special deals. Now that
Speaker 1: that's kind of important to note. Uh, just just quickly
Speaker 1: that these third party companies are probably still going to
Speaker 1: charge you for their services. UM. So you know, it's
Speaker 1: not necessarily free, but it does work very very easily,
Speaker 1: and it is uh you know, synchronized with Google Drive,
Speaker 1: so it makes it very easy to do one from
Speaker 1: the other. Right now, your mileage may vary again again. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so let's talk a little bit about the tears that
Speaker 1: the Google offers. No more tears. That's my Aussie Osborne
Speaker 1: reference for the day. Um, actually it's probably not. I'm
Speaker 1: sure I'll get a crazy train in there somewhere man
Speaker 1: or maybe war pigs. Maybe, I'm not sure how you're
Speaker 1: going to get that one. Maybe iron man. Uh, I mean, look,
Speaker 1: I can force a reference if I have to be
Speaker 1: the first time. Anyway, So the tears that Google offers,
Speaker 1: so you've got five gigabytes of free storage. Actually, let's
Speaker 1: back that up. Okay, Google makes its money. We're just
Speaker 1: a little bit deep. Google makes its money from advertising. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's true. Google is an advertising company when you get
Speaker 1: down to it, or at least they they run advertising, right,
Speaker 1: So let's let's kind of take one step back and
Speaker 1: look at Google services. Okay, Google Docs, the previous Google
Speaker 1: Docs free. Yeah, female, that's free. Searches free to the user. UM.
Speaker 1: Android is free for people to uh to install on
Speaker 1: cell phones. Um. All this stuff is offered more or
Speaker 1: less free to the consumer. This is one of the
Speaker 1: big changes. Because Google's competitors in this space, people like
Speaker 1: uh that Jonathan mentioned before, dropbox, Box formerly boxed, dot Net,
Speaker 1: Sugar Sinc. Sky Drive, sky Drive which is Microsoft's UM
Speaker 1: application for this. These guys all offer tears. There's an
Speaker 1: initial free smaller space, and then they are are tiered pricing.
Speaker 1: So you get uh, you know, small for free, you
Speaker 1: get medium for a few dollars a month, you get
Speaker 1: large for a few more dollars a month, etcetera, etcetera.
Speaker 1: So this is new. Google hasn't done this with other products. Really,
Speaker 1: I can't think of one, uh where it offers tiered
Speaker 1: pricing like this. Nothing's pop being the mind immediately. I mean,
Speaker 1: you could make some arguments about Google Voice, but that's
Speaker 1: a little different. That's a little different. Um. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: that's yeah, it is is something to make a call
Speaker 1: on Google Voice normally like over the phone. In general,
Speaker 1: it's free. Now, granted, what Google could have done is
Speaker 1: they could have offered the five gigabytes free storage, and
Speaker 1: that would have been it. But see for Google to
Speaker 1: offer huge amounts of storage for free would be well
Speaker 1: pretty soon Google, that would be eating into Google's revenue.
Speaker 1: So it's understandable why they did what they did. Um
Speaker 1: and really, when we get into the comparisons, you'll see
Speaker 1: it's fairly comparable to the other services. Some offer less
Speaker 1: space for free, some offer more. But um, Dropbox, for example,
Speaker 1: is I would say, the for what it's worth, the
Speaker 1: eight pound gorilla, and yet that offers two gigabytes and
Speaker 1: starts at two gigabytes for friends. For friends, you get
Speaker 1: five hundred megabytes per referral. And up to sixteen gigabytes
Speaker 1: extra storage, so you could have up to eight gigabytes
Speaker 1: for free if you referred that many friends to drop Box.
Speaker 1: Yeah so, uh but but getting back to it, the
Speaker 1: five gigabytes is free for any user. So if you
Speaker 1: have a Google account and you have five gigs free
Speaker 1: storage online right now, uh, if that's enough, then for
Speaker 1: about two dollars, and this is all at launch, I
Speaker 1: should say, because if you're listening to this podcast in
Speaker 1: I'm sure the prices may be different. But for twenty
Speaker 1: for two dollars and forty nine cents a month, you
Speaker 1: can get five gigabytes of storage. For four dollars and
Speaker 1: ninety nine cents a month, you get a hundred gigabytes
Speaker 1: of storage. And if you're really really data hungry, for
Speaker 1: a cool forty nine nine a month, for nine dollars
Speaker 1: nine cents, you can get a terrabyte of storage online.
Speaker 1: So uh so yeah, for people who need way more space.
Speaker 1: Let's say that you're that you do a lot of
Speaker 1: video editing, because you do a lot of liberation with
Speaker 1: other people with videos, and you want to have that
Speaker 1: ability for people to all look at it without it
Speaker 1: going live in any other way, Um, this would be
Speaker 1: pretty useful. And uh, again it's it's kind of comparable
Speaker 1: to what other companies offer. Uh, some of them don't
Speaker 1: have um as high amount of storage that actually, none
Speaker 1: of them offer as much storage as Google Drive does
Speaker 1: at its highest tier. The highest tier that Google Drive
Speaker 1: offers is sixteen terabytes of storage, which is for seven
Speaker 1: a month. Yeah. Well, I would say that some of
Speaker 1: them I've seen essentially say hey, if you need if
Speaker 1: you really need more storage than this, give us a
Speaker 1: call and we'll work something out. Um. But yeah, and
Speaker 1: and there are there are a few things. Um. One
Speaker 1: you know, this isn't completely new because Google docs has
Speaker 1: allowed you to upload files like word Microsoft Word documents
Speaker 1: for a little while now. But this is this is
Speaker 1: basically the formal, uh, the formal announcement that hey, we
Speaker 1: are going to offer you a certain amount of storage
Speaker 1: and this is how much it costs. So it's really
Speaker 1: a delineation of all of that. Um. Yeah. The maximum
Speaker 1: file size that you can upload to a Google Drive
Speaker 1: as assuming that you have that much space as ten gigabytes. Um.
Speaker 1: And uh, which is one of the larger actually, I
Speaker 1: think that's the largest file size among the the consumer
Speaker 1: cloud storage, there's enterprise cloud storage. To Amazon offers enterprise
Speaker 1: level cloud storage. That's a different animal. Well, in a
Speaker 1: way it is, and in a way it isn't, because
Speaker 1: some of the other cloud services are using Amazon as
Speaker 1: their right story. So in some cases you are using
Speaker 1: Amazon Cloud storage, you're just using it through another company.
Speaker 1: But yeah, we can genius business model right there. We
Speaker 1: can do some comparisons with the others. But first, before
Speaker 1: we did the comparisons, I wanted to talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about some controversy that popped up. So there are
Speaker 1: these things, these terms of service agreements that you know,
Speaker 1: standard across the web, and sometimes people read them, and
Speaker 1: when they do read them, sometimes they say, hey, that
Speaker 1: doesn't sound quite right. Um. So one of the problems
Speaker 1: that came up are not even a problem. One of
Speaker 1: the one of the questions that popped up all had
Speaker 1: to do with part of the Google Drive terms of service,
Speaker 1: which said that anyone who would upload or submit content
Speaker 1: to Google Drive would grant Google and I quote a
Speaker 1: worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative
Speaker 1: works such as those resulting from translations, adaptations, or other
Speaker 1: changes we make so that your content works better with
Speaker 1: our services, communicate, published publicly, perform publicly, display, and distribute
Speaker 1: such content end quote, which gave some people the fear
Speaker 1: that perhaps what Google was saying is if you upload
Speaker 1: your content to our service, we can do whatever we
Speaker 1: want to it. Now. In truth, that's not what Google meant. No,
Speaker 1: and this is common. I actually found an article on
Speaker 1: c net where they had taken the terms of service
Speaker 1: from basically everybody, the major players in the cloud storage business,
Speaker 1: and there are clauses similar to that in many of them.
Speaker 1: And what they're basically saying is, um, you're giving us, Okay,
Speaker 1: you put the you put the file on the server.
Speaker 1: What they're saying is, you're going to allow us to
Speaker 1: make a thumbnail, a derivative work. You'll you'll let us
Speaker 1: capture the first page and make it small so you
Speaker 1: can see what it looks like. They they have you
Speaker 1: have to give them some of these rights to allow
Speaker 1: you to access it from other computers, right to share
Speaker 1: it with other collaborators with exactly. And that's what I
Speaker 1: think they were trying to accomplish. But the way it
Speaker 1: was worded freaked people right out right now, And when
Speaker 1: you think about a little bit you realize without this permission,
Speaker 1: Google drive would not work. Yeah, because you put it
Speaker 1: there and you couldn't get it back Google would Google
Speaker 1: wouldn't have the permission to display it in a way
Speaker 1: that would be useful to you. So, for example, let's
Speaker 1: go with the collaboration thing. Here's here's an example. And
Speaker 1: I think it was c net that wrote this example. Um,
Speaker 1: I want to say it was it was Google. I
Speaker 1: think that actually said here's here's what the h here's
Speaker 1: a use case scenario that will explain it. But I
Speaker 1: think it was seen that that reported it said. All right,
Speaker 1: so imagine that you are collaborating with a screenwriter in China,
Speaker 1: and the screenwriter is writing in Chinese characters and you
Speaker 1: don't read Chinese. So when you open up the file,
Speaker 1: Google Translate translates the document from Chinese into English so
Speaker 1: that you can read it and it's in a format
Speaker 1: that that makes sense to you. Well, those that's changing
Speaker 1: that work, it's adapting it in the form of translating it.
Speaker 1: And so this permission gives Google the rights to do
Speaker 1: that so that that document is actually used full to you.
Speaker 1: It's not Google says they're not planning on doing anything
Speaker 1: like taking your work that you have uploaded, changing it
Speaker 1: around and then selling it somewhere. That's that's not the
Speaker 1: purpose of this language. The purpose is just so that
Speaker 1: the features within Google Drive are legal because you have
Speaker 1: permitted Google to do it. Yeah, or or using it
Speaker 1: in ads. Now. I've seen some people say that they
Speaker 1: have seen their stuff being used in ads that are
Speaker 1: being shown to them, um, but that whether it goes
Speaker 1: beyond those people, I haven't heard anything about that, So
Speaker 1: I'm not certain exactly how accurate that is, um, because
Speaker 1: you know, they do collect quite a bit of information
Speaker 1: on you, and they really probably wouldn't need to look
Speaker 1: at your documents to be able to target advertising to
Speaker 1: you and your interests. Yeah, I mean, it's also it's
Speaker 1: also important that you know that these permissions also allow
Speaker 1: Google to do things like scan all your documents so
Speaker 1: that if you need to search them, they can turn
Speaker 1: results on those searches. Otherwise, again, you wouldn't be able
Speaker 1: to search anything. You would just have to go through
Speaker 1: all that huge pile of files and find what you needed. Again,
Speaker 1: it's useful, it's a useful feature, but in order to
Speaker 1: do that, you have to grant them those those those commissions. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because if you don't then uh then legally Google would
Speaker 1: be unable to provide that, at least not without breaking
Speaker 1: the law. We've got a little bit more about Google
Speaker 1: Drive to cover, but before we get there, let's take
Speaker 1: another quick break to thank our sponsor. I think in
Speaker 1: the last day or so, the tempers have cooled, but
Speaker 1: people are still saying, well, okay, fine, but the way
Speaker 1: it's written is very broad, and it could be allowed,
Speaker 1: It could allow opening the door to doing these things.
Speaker 1: So they're saying that Google was a little reckless is
Speaker 1: probably a strong word, but they were a little uh
Speaker 1: vague in terms, and and it does grant them those
Speaker 1: permissions where they could theoretically do that. But again, these
Speaker 1: terms are very similar to the ones used by just
Speaker 1: about everybody else out there. I remember almost identical story
Speaker 1: from a couple of years ago, and I can't remember
Speaker 1: what the company was. It might have even been Google again,
Speaker 1: but I remember distinctly that there was a discussion about
Speaker 1: this sort of thing and how people were worried that
Speaker 1: they were handing their rights over to another company, when
Speaker 1: in truth, what was going on was just like this.
Speaker 1: It was it was the permissions were there so that
Speaker 1: the service could display the work and the way it
Speaker 1: needed to be displayed for it to be useful and
Speaker 1: uh and so ultimately it just boiled down to know,
Speaker 1: we're not selling your stuff. We just need this permission
Speaker 1: or else there's no service. We we literally cannot do
Speaker 1: what we need to do for us to be useful.
Speaker 1: So um yeah, no need to panic, although it's always
Speaker 1: good to question just in case. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: Google does still have that that motto of don't be evil,
Speaker 1: but you never know well or evil is kind of
Speaker 1: an interesting thing that itself is not entirely uh like
Speaker 1: one one man's definition of evil may be different from another's.
Speaker 1: And I've heard it clarified, um prime that that was
Speaker 1: really intended to mean, don't manipulate search results to facilitate advertising,
Speaker 1: and it was specifically geared towards that, So you know,
Speaker 1: keep your eyes it's always going to keep your eyes open. Yeah, No,
Speaker 1: it's it's always important to question. That's not what we meant.
Speaker 1: So let's go on to talking a little bit about
Speaker 1: how Google drives stacks up against other cloud storage services.
Speaker 1: So with the free storage with five gigabytes free storage,
Speaker 1: that puts it on the same playing ground as services
Speaker 1: like Box and Sugar Sinc. Both of those offer five
Speaker 1: gigs as well. Dropbox is a little less, is two gigabytes,
Speaker 1: but again, if you start referring other people and they
Speaker 1: joined the service, you get five megabytes per referral up
Speaker 1: to a maximum sixteen gigs, So you could in theory
Speaker 1: have way more storage for free on Dropbox than you
Speaker 1: would on these other services. Microsoft sky Drive is at
Speaker 1: seven gigabytes, but people who had sky Drive accounts previous
Speaker 1: to Google Drives Launch can have up to gigabytes for free. Yes,
Speaker 1: but that offer is being made for a limited time,
Speaker 1: so if you had that and you want to keep that,
Speaker 1: you might want to go quickly over there too. In fact,
Speaker 1: by the time this podcast publishes, there may very well
Speaker 1: be late, too late, very um so in that case
Speaker 1: we're sorry anyway. The the minimum upgrade, so the smallest
Speaker 1: step that you can make from free to a paid
Speaker 1: service is uh as a little different depending on the
Speaker 1: the service. So for Google Drive it's two dollars and
Speaker 1: forty nine cents per month for gigs of storage. For
Speaker 1: for drop Box, you get the lowest step is fifty
Speaker 1: gigabytes of storage for nine dollars and ninety nine cents
Speaker 1: a month, So if you're breaking it down per gig,
Speaker 1: then Google Drive is cheaper, although you get less storage. Uh.
Speaker 1: Box is twenty five gigabytes, so same amount as Google Drive,
Speaker 1: same amount storage, but for nine dollars nine nine cents
Speaker 1: a month, so it's more expensive. Sugar Sink is thirty
Speaker 1: gigabytes of storage for four dollars and ninety nine cents
Speaker 1: a month, so uh, it's you get you get five
Speaker 1: gigabytes more storage, but it's um it's essentially twice the
Speaker 1: price of Google Drive. And then um sky Drive is
Speaker 1: twenty gigabytes for ten dollars a year, which is actually, uh,
Speaker 1: it's a little less storage than Google Drive. But Google
Speaker 1: Drive at tot nine a month, you multiply that by
Speaker 1: twelve months, then you're like, oh well, Microsoft sky Drive
Speaker 1: in away is a little cheaper. Um. So that's how
Speaker 1: those stack up. And also the maximum file size limit
Speaker 1: Google Drive blows the others out of the water, except
Speaker 1: for Sugar Sink, which does not technically have a file
Speaker 1: size limit, but the but box is limit is a
Speaker 1: hundred megabytes, so that's that's not too big. Drop Box
Speaker 1: and sky Drive both have a limit of two gigabytes
Speaker 1: for a file size. UH. The UH, Sugar Sinc, drop Box,
Speaker 1: sky Drive, and Google Drive are all compatible both with
Speaker 1: Windows and Mac. Box is a business enterprise UM service,
Speaker 1: so primarily I mean you can you can get one
Speaker 1: if you want one. Uh. All of them have iPhone apps,
Speaker 1: except for Google Drive right now, but Google drives working
Speaker 1: on it. Uh. The only one that doesn't have an
Speaker 1: Android app out of the of the ones I've listed
Speaker 1: is sky Drive, Microsoft SkyDrive. Everything else has an Android
Speaker 1: app already out on the market. Windows Phone, well, here's
Speaker 1: a dock. Microsoft sky Drive has a Windows Phone app,
Speaker 1: but Google Drive doesn't, Dropbox doesn't, Box doesn't. Sugar Sinks
Speaker 1: is supposedly coming out, so maybe by the time this
Speaker 1: podcast because Live Sugar Sink will have THEIRS. UM. They
Speaker 1: all are. They all have web access, so you can
Speaker 1: access the service over the web, So even if your
Speaker 1: device does not have an application that is native to
Speaker 1: that device, you can still get there over the web,
Speaker 1: assuming you have a browser. UH. And all of them
Speaker 1: allow for public file sharing, so that you can actually
Speaker 1: let other folks see what's in your drive or see
Speaker 1: specific files that you have, you know, enabled public sharing.
Speaker 1: You can also do private file sharing with all of them,
Speaker 1: so that if you want to have just a group
Speaker 1: of collaborators, let's say you're all working on a project
Speaker 1: together and you want to be able to look at
Speaker 1: everyone else's UM information on a particular file, you can
Speaker 1: do that, and then the public itself would be shielded.
Speaker 1: They would not be able to see that UM and
Speaker 1: most of them offer some sort of collaborative document editing,
Speaker 1: although you might have to use proprietary apps in order
Speaker 1: to do it. Drop Bucks does not, it's more of
Speaker 1: a storage feature than collaboration. Sugar Sinc. Also doesn't, but
Speaker 1: sky Drive, Box and Google Drive all do UM. And
Speaker 1: then there are a couple of other UH features like
Speaker 1: the third party apps UM integration. That's that's pretty much
Speaker 1: standard across the board. Sky Drive is specifically going to
Speaker 1: be for Windows eight apps, so but others are you know,
Speaker 1: pretty much unfettered. So that's kind of how it boils
Speaker 1: down to the other major cloud services that are out there,
Speaker 1: and there's there's more than that. That's just that's just
Speaker 1: a handful of them. Oh yeah, I've I've got different
Speaker 1: applications for several of them, including UH A Bunto one,
Speaker 1: which is offered by Canonical primarily for Linux users. And
Speaker 1: you know, there are there are others out there they're
Speaker 1: trying UM and people have a question whether or not
Speaker 1: these services are going to continue into the future. UM.
Speaker 1: I think Google Drive may end up being a model
Speaker 1: for what's going to be happening. Google Drive and sky
Speaker 1: Drive basically are you know, sort of hybrids of online collaboration,
Speaker 1: software and storage. UM. So the pure storage players like
Speaker 1: Dropbox and Sugar Sink may have a difficult time competing
Speaker 1: with them in the future, especially since they're owned by uh,
Speaker 1: you know, sky Driving and um Google Driver are you know,
Speaker 1: big players, and they've got a whole lot of money
Speaker 1: to throw at these these um different applications, so you know,
Speaker 1: creating larger and larger file storage for free, offering those
Speaker 1: services for free. Um. You know, it may not be
Speaker 1: very long at all before Google and Microsoft are offering
Speaker 1: you ten gigabytes UM or you know, or more than that.
Speaker 1: And of course, you know, Apple is doing something very
Speaker 1: similar with the the um I work sweet too, So
Speaker 1: um it's very possible that the big players in the
Speaker 1: industry may run off with it and and the pure
Speaker 1: storage guys sort of followed by the wayside. I would
Speaker 1: say that is a very very real possibility, but probably
Speaker 1: not for another year or two at least. Um, just
Speaker 1: as people decide what it is they want to do
Speaker 1: with these systems. If they end up using just storage,
Speaker 1: you know, hey, I'd rather create a document on my
Speaker 1: desktop and then share it with my collaborators on the
Speaker 1: on the drive rather than you know, us working on
Speaker 1: a document in the cloud in my web browser. I think, Um,
Speaker 1: I think the real problem for the consumer in the
Speaker 1: short term is going to be, uh, figuring out where
Speaker 1: the heck your data is if you're using multiple, um,
Speaker 1: multiple services. I do have that problem, yeah, because if
Speaker 1: you I have Dropbox and I have Google Drive, those
Speaker 1: are the only two that I'm using. I've got like
Speaker 1: six or seven. Yeah. I resisted that temptation because I
Speaker 1: knew what would happen. But it's the problem you have.
Speaker 1: The problem you have within one drive is multiplied when
Speaker 1: you have multiple drives. So that's like that's like you
Speaker 1: come home and you don't know what which computer has
Speaker 1: the file that you need on it. So you've got
Speaker 1: four computers in your house for some reason. Uh, like
Speaker 1: you live in my house for example. Actually I think
Speaker 1: I've got more than four, but anyway, I think i've
Speaker 1: got five. Anyway, let's say that you've got five computers
Speaker 1: at your house. Then let's they got five computers in
Speaker 1: my house, and that I have a file saved on
Speaker 1: one of those computers. Then comes the fun part of
Speaker 1: going to each computer and figuring out where it is.
Speaker 1: The same problem. If you're using multiple cloud storage services,
Speaker 1: you're gonna have to go and do search for each one.
Speaker 1: That The benefit to it is that you can at
Speaker 1: least do that search from one machine, as long as
Speaker 1: that one machine can access each of the services you're using,
Speaker 1: and if they all have web based access and you've
Speaker 1: got a web browser, then you've got that problem solved,
Speaker 1: even if it's not the most elegant solution, but still
Speaker 1: means that you have to check each one of the
Speaker 1: drives and figure out where you have it, and then
Speaker 1: you might even fall into that same trap you had
Speaker 1: before where you might have duplicate files. You might have
Speaker 1: one instance on one drive and another instance on another drive.
Speaker 1: So um yeah, that's that's gonna be a problem too,
Speaker 1: is that if you use a lot of these services,
Speaker 1: then you still have to have some sort of discipline
Speaker 1: when it comes to data management. Maybe you only use
Speaker 1: one for one particular type of file and use another
Speaker 1: for a different one. In that way, at least you
Speaker 1: reduce that confusion. Me what I think I'm gonna end
Speaker 1: up doing is I'm going to pick one, and I
Speaker 1: haven't decided which yet, although let's be honest, Google Drive
Speaker 1: is probably the lead simply because I have a lot
Speaker 1: of products that run Android, so you know, I'm kind
Speaker 1: of locked into that in ecosystem already. But I haven't
Speaker 1: completely decided yet. So let's say, you know, whichever one
Speaker 1: I decide on, I'm going to eventually move all my things,
Speaker 1: all of the things. I'm going to move all of
Speaker 1: the things into that folder, and then I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: get rid of the others, so that way I don't
Speaker 1: have that issue. And that concludes this classic episode about
Speaker 1: Google Drive. I hope you guys enjoyed it. If you
Speaker 1: have any suggestions about future topics for tech Stuff, send
Speaker 1: me an email. The address is tech Stuff at how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com, or pop on over to our
Speaker 1: website that's tech Stuff podcast dot com. You'll find an
Speaker 1: archive of all of our older shows. You'll find links
Speaker 1: to our presence on social media. You'll find a link
Speaker 1: to our online merchandise store. Every purchase you make there
Speaker 1: goes to help the show, which we greatly appreciate. And
Speaker 1: I will talk to you again and really soon. Text
Speaker 1: Stuff is a production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works.
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