Google Drive is out

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vshah

Lifer
Sep 20, 2003
19,003
24
81
I'm in the same situation. Hopefully we can get grandfathered in this plan forever. $5/year for 20 GB of cloud storage (and pictures and e-mails more than 7 GB) is an awesome deal :)

yup, the small print says we're good as long as our billing info stays current and we don't upgrade/downgrade.
 

cronos

Diamond Member
Nov 7, 2001
9,380
26
101
yup, the small print says we're good as long as our billing info stays current and we don't upgrade/downgrade.

Yeah I didn't see this until later.

How to keep your old plan

Google storage plans have changed, but you can stay on your current plan as long as you:

Keep your account active
Keep payment information in Google Wallet accurate and up-to-date
Don’t cancel or upgrade your current plan
If your account lapses, your credit card is declined, or you choose to change your storage plan in any way (upgrade or downgrade), you’ll be switched to the new Google storage plan.
 

sciwizam

Golden Member
Oct 22, 2004
1,953
0
0
As always, read the whole ToS, not a chopped up version.

From Verge Comments: http://www.theverge.com/2012/4/24/2...rvice-comparison-avoid-google-drive#100078908

Dropbox

By using our Services you provide us with information, files, and folders that you submit to Dropbox (together, "your stuff"). You retain full ownership to your stuff. We don’t claim any ownership to any of it. These Terms do not grant us any rights to your stuff or intellectual property except for the limited rights that are needed to run the Services, as explained below.
We may need your permission to do things you ask us to do with your stuff, for example, hosting your files, or sharing them at your direction. This includes product features visible to you, for example, image thumbnails or document previews. It also includes design choices we make to technically administer our Services, for example, how we redundantly backup data to keep it safe. You give us the permissions we need to do those things solely to provide the Services. This permission also extends to trusted third parties we work with to provide the Services, for example Amazon, which provides our storage space (again, only to provide the Services).​
Skydrive

Except for material that we license to you, we don’t claim ownership of the content you provide on the service. Your content remains your content. We also don’t control, verify, or endorse the content that you and others make available on the service.
You control who may access your content. If you share content in public areas of the service or in shared areas available to others you’ve chosen, then you agree that anyone you’ve shared content with may use that content. When you give others access to your content on the service, you grant them free, nonexclusive permission to use, reproduce, distribute, display, transmit, and communicate to the public the content solely in connection with the service and other products and services made available by Microsoft. If you don’t want others to have those rights, don’t use the service to share your content.
You understand that Microsoft may need, and you hereby grant Microsoft the right, to use, modify, adapt, reproduce, distribute, and display content posted on the service solely to the extent necessary to provide the service.​
Google Drive

Some of our Services allow you to submit content. You retain ownership of any intellectual property rights that you hold in that content. In short, what belongs to you stays yours.
When you upload or otherwise submit content to our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content. The rights you grant in this license are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting, and improving our Services, and to develop new ones. This license continues even if you stop using our Services (for example, for a business listing you have added to Google Maps). Some Services may offer you ways to access and remove content that has been provided to that Service. Also, in some of our Services, there are terms or settings that narrow the scope of our use of the content submitted in those Services. Make sure you have the necessary rights to grant us this license for any content that you submit to our Services.​
 

Ravynmagi

Diamond Member
Jun 16, 2007
3,102
24
81
A bug (or missing feature I guess): If you upload a video to Drive and then try to download it to a mobile device, it auto-shrinks the file, so quality (if it were a video for example) takes a nosedive. I'd like to be able to have manual control over that.

This was over LTE, I'm thinking Google is doing it to save people's data bandwidth. Will try it on wifi.

I tested this out too last night. This is a pretty terrible "feature". I put a 50MB video file up, then when I tried to download it to my Android phone I noticed it came over as a 6MB file and it looked absolutely terrible. It even changed it from a 16:9 ratio to a 4:3.

This "feature" needs to die in a fire. I hope there will be a way to disable it. I use Dropbox often to stream videos to my Android or iOS devices. Google Drive definitely can't be used to do the same if it's going to make everything a pixelated mess with a 4:3 ratio.
 

dlock13

Platinum Member
Oct 24, 2006
2,806
2
81
I tested this out too last night. This is a pretty terrible "feature". I put a 50MB video file up, then when I tried to download it to my Android phone I noticed it came over as a 6MB file and it looked absolutely terrible. It even changed it from a 16:9 ratio to a 4:3.

This "feature" needs to die in a fire. I hope there will be a way to disable it. I use Dropbox often to stream videos to my Android or iOS devices. Google Drive definitely can't be used to do the same if it's going to make everything a pixelated mess with a 4:3 ratio.

Is that over 3G/4G or are you using WiFi? Can you test WiFi and see if it does it then if you haven't?
 

alent1234

Diamond Member
Dec 15, 2002
3,915
0
0
went to 100% of my limit and deleted some things. still saying i'm at 100%

this is still beta
 

alent1234

Diamond Member
Dec 15, 2002
3,915
0
0
if they don't ask for permission to do whatever they want to your data then some gold miner is going to sue them for taking your data without permission
 

Nothinman

Elite Member
Sep 14, 2001
30,672
0
0
Hah they own your stuff, didn't apple try to do this with their ebooks and eventually backed off?

No, you still own it but they have the rights to go through it and use it for certain purposes too. Basically, you shouldn't put anything on the Internet that you consider private and don't want to risk getting out. If you want to sync private data between several machines with something like Google Drive, you should use an encrypted container like TrueCrypt.
 

Pia

Golden Member
Feb 28, 2008
1,563
0
0
No, you still own it but they have the rights to go through it and use it for certain purposes too. Basically, you shouldn't put anything on the Internet that you consider private and don't want to risk getting out. If you want to sync private data between several machines with something like Google Drive, you should use an encrypted container like TrueCrypt.
The trouble with that kind of tinkering is how to make it transparent and seamless, and how to prevent excess data transfer if you are storing more than a bunch of text files. Spideroak looks like an interesting possibility for handling this.

I currently use Sugarsync to sync photos and videos taken on my phone. Previously used Dropbox to share program setting files. I just set up Skydrive & Drive accounts (no, Drive doesn't work for me either). Gonna be interesting to see how the competition is going to pan out. It's looking possible that Drive can replace SS & DB for me, but some kind of encrypted storage where only I have the key would be very interesting, at least as a complement.
 

tommo123

Platinum Member
Sep 25, 2005
2,617
48
91
well, mine is enabled finally and says this oddly:

You are currently using 67 MB (0%) of your 87040 MB. :eek:
 

tommo123

Platinum Member
Sep 25, 2005
2,617
48
91
i bought 20gig a while back for picasa which google updated for free to 80. now my picasa account says i have about 20gigs used of 80 but because of that extra space, my gdrive says 60meg used out of 87 gig. i guess the extra space i bought is seperate across all sections of google products.

e.g

my gmail says: 14.1 GB (15%) of 90 GB
 

Pia

Golden Member
Feb 28, 2008
1,563
0
0
Yay, enabled! I was suspecting they were going to drag their feet releasing Drive outside US, as happens with so many services.