TechStuff Classic: TechStuff Goes for a Google Drive

It is called tech stuff goes for a Google Drive. Now, at the time that we recorded this, How stuff Works was not using Google Drive as a true storage, cloud computing, you know platform. We we had it personally, but we weren't using it as a company. That would change over the years. How stuff Works would adopt Google Drive at one point, and now we're in another transition phase, which

is a lot of fun. I'm looking at my producer Tari, who is agreeing with me about how fun it is to try and transfer from one storage system to another. She's she's giving me a big I think it's a thumbs up. There's definitely there's definitely a finger up. I'm gonna say it's a thumb So I hope you guys enjoy this conversation. About Google Drive, and I'll talk to you again in just a moment. So today tech stuff fans, we're all gonna go on a little Google Drive. O. Cool.

We're gonna talk about those robotic cars that don't need drivers except you know, when they're sitting in the seat and they watch the car where you're on somebody else. No, that's that's not what my notes are on. I was talking about Google Drive, you know, the cloud storage Google Drive announced on a Well, this will be a fun podcast.

We're gonna see what our notes show. Um. No, really, we're gonna talk about Google Drive today and the day we're recording this podcast, just in case you guys are curious. I know that you'll be listening to it quite a while afterwards because we record so early and that ants. But it's April the day we're recording this, so it's just three days after Google finally officially announced and launched

Google Drive. Right. It was sort of a one of those closely guarded secrets like that everyone knew about it, and everyone knew about like the iPad for two years before it was released. Right. Yeah, people have been talking about Google having a cloud storage service for for a couple of years now, so this was and even Google made reference to that. But before we really get into what Google Drive is, we should probably talk about what cloud storage is in general and why it's important. Uh,

cloud storage is pretty it's a pretty simple concept. The idea is that you can store data on servers in the cloud. So you're talking about using someone else's computers to store your information, and you can access the information over the Internet using some sort of interface, usually web based, And they call it the cloud, of course, because the Internet is a nebulous group of machines and it's just sort of out there all is changing like a cloud.

So yeah, so, and and the idea being that it's also kind of like a cloud in the sense that you can access it from any machine that has that Internet capability. Right. It may require a special app depending upon the type of cloud storage. Uh, because not everything is web based. There are a lot of different desktop clients that you can have that will allow you to store information to a cloud drive. So it lives on

your computer's desktop as if it were a regular file folder. Right, So you think of your your regular hard drive folders that you would go into to look at various files, like you might store all your pictures in a in a pictures folder, and all your videos and a videos folder,

that kind of thing. Um, a cloud storage drive might show up on your desktop as if it were a regular folder on your computer, but instead of living on your computer, the information gets sent over the Internet to a a remote machine and it's stored on that machine. And there is no identifier that links that particular file to you as a user, a registered user of that service. And uh, in fact, when I say it lives on

one machine, that's not entirely true. Almost every cloud service, in fact, every reputable cloud service out there uses redundant measures so that the file is on several different machines in case one machine fails. I'm real sorry, I only had one machine and it went down. Yeah, that would not go over so well. Uh Jester's cloud service, Jester's cloud service. Yeah, there's never really been up on that whole. I think I need to I think I need to

register that domain now, Chester's cloud service. We got hair a cumula nimbus um. So the Yeah, the idea is that obviously that you would be able to offload storage from your native device, especially if you are one of those people who has lots of different devices, and you want to be able to access the same information no matter which device you're using. Because in the old days, back before a cloud storage, a couple of years ago, yeah, not that long ago, you you only had a few

different options. You could save something to a physical medium, so a disk for example, compact disc or a floppy disc way back in the day, or a thumb drive something like that, and then you could pourt that over to another device, pull it up from the physical medium, and then work on it that way, save it back to the physical medium, and then go back, and you

know it. It was a little cumbersome. It also meant that you would often end up with lots of duplicate copies of a particular file, and if people made changes, then you had to figure out, all right, which one of these copies has the most recent, most relevant changes, and then I have to get rid of all the others or else I'm going to confuse them all. Yeah, you have to go through and you you end up

looking at creation dates and when things were modified. Wait, that was done at nine, Okay, I can get rid of that one. And it takes forever, and and it's particularly difficult if you have more than one collaborator, Right, So if Chris and I were working on a document, it would be frustrating for us to try and and we're both working on copies of a document, we're both making changes, be very frustrating to cohlate those changes and figure out you know which ones are relevant and which

ones are the most recent. Uh, and may very well be that a change I make makes a later change

that Chris makes irrelevant. So the idea behind cloud storage is it's not and it's not always connected, but there's a lot of work around collaboration in cloud storage, so that if you have multiple people who need access to a particular file, you are able to share that file across several instances, and you might even be able to have multiple people work on that file at the same time, and those changes will be reflected more or less in

real time for each person. So that way, if Chris Word did make a change to a sentence within that file, I could actually see him making that more or less in real time. This is particularly true with Google Service, but because Google Drive has been very tightly integrated with Google Docs, in fact, it's kind of superseded Google Docs in a way, but other services also offer similar features. Um And just to clear things up, my my joke about a couple of years ago, of course, the cloud

is uh much older than that. We've been using variations on cloud services for many years now. Uh. In fact, I don't think I think it really proceeds labeling things as cloud, which is really sort of a convenient marketing term for for services such as these. Um, it gives you it when people mention the cloud. It basically serves as a a hint to say, hey, the materials or software is being stored on servers on the Internet, not on your computer. So it's it's sort of a short

marketing shorthand for these services. But yeah, I mean we've talked about Google Docs many times. I mean it predates the beginning of our podcast, so um And there were many services using those kinds of uh, those kinds of technologies before, but in recent in recent years, there have

been several services that take advantage of cloud storage. Specifically, um, not simply to store that the software as a service, you know, or or the documents that you say in Google Docs, um, but to upload and download your own file so that you don't have to use a physical medium. You don't have to worry about losing that that flash

drive you carry in your pocket or your bag. Um, you don't have to walk a disk from one place to another or worry about it if you want to, say, work on a graduate school assignment on your lunch break at work. I don't know anyone who would have done that at how stuff works, except maybe me co fle of years ago. Or you just happen to have like a whole bunch of really powerful magnets nearby and you don't want to use magnetic storage. Turn it. I had my flash drive in my pocket when I went for

the m R. I I was thinking. I was thinking of the old old floppy disk days. I actually did lose data on a floppy disk because uh, floppy disk had a little bit of a close encounter with a magnet and that was enough to ruin it. Oh yeah, but um yeah, I mean these these services were being marketed specifically as a hey, you can store stuff here, and and um, the services in question, many of them came from from the little guys. We're not talking about

Apple or Google or Facebook or Amazon or Microsoft. These were all independent vendors and they would offer. They still do offer a free tier of service for a small amount of storage, and then you could upgrade for a certain price per month you could get more storage, and for more than that you get more storage, and they they basically would work that out in businesses. If you really needed a whole lot of cloud storage, um, you know you could do that. But gradually the big players

have been getting into the game. And that's why, uh, everybody has been expecting Google to do it, because I mean, hey, if anybody's got server storage and data centers, it's Google. It turns out that storage is relatively inexpensive, so very very inexpensive over the last few years. So so for a business to enter into that and just purchase a lot of different servers specifically to save information from from users, uh, it's not as big a barrier as some other forms

of internet based businesses. However, it does mean that you have to create these systems in place for things like security. You need to have you know, the important things for cloud computing involved security accessibility. So you want to make sure that whatever your system is, it's easy to access on multiple platforms. So that means you want people to be able to access it via PC, mac, smartphone, tablet.

Lots of different devices can connect to the Internet now, so you want to be able to give your users the freedom to be able to access the information over as many of platforms as possible. You know, the more convenient your services, the more valuable it is to the customer. So so security and accessibility and uh, just that that whole accessibility slash convenience and just the whole idea of giving a certain tier for free so that you you show people how valuable the services now and and we

should clear this up. Cloud storage is not necessarily all about backing up your data, although people have used it for that kind of purpose. It's really more about, well, there's certain documents or certain files that you may want to have stored in the cloud because you want to have easy access across multiple devices. You may want to share that with other people, and it's a lot easier to do that when it's on a web based drive

than it would be on your own computers. So let's say that I've shot a video and I've got this video living on my computer, emailing that video out to all the different people I want to see it. Uh, maybe I don't want to upload it to something like YouTube. Maybe I just want to send that directly to a few people. Well, for example, what if you were trying to preview a video with the people you were working collaborating with it on right exactly, you're not ready to

make it public? Yeah, yeah, you might need to still do some edits. You may you may just be looking at this with your friends and say, just just doesn't feel snappy enough. Do you have any suggestions? So in that case, yeah, you wouldn't want to necessarily upload to YouTube. I mean, you could upload YouTube and make it private and then send out the link. But but if you just would rather skip that stuff and and just keep it in pre production mode, um, then a cloud drive

would be very useful. You could send out, you could share the link to that file within your cloud drive, and then other people could go to your cloud drive and view that one particular file without having access to anything else that's in your cloud drive. So all they would get is access to whatever file you you permitted them access to. Now you might be able to set some permissions on files so that they are publicly available. Would means that anyone who could visit your drive would

be able to see that particular file. But in most cases, I think people just have special permissions for particular folks and then and of course you could always say that where only you have access to it, there's no need to you know, you're not forced to collaborate. Right, So

those are the that's the basics around cloud drives. And one of the reasons why I think cloud drives are getting more important is that you're starting to see, right about the time we're recording this podcast, in particular, you're starting to see some some devices come out besides ones that come from a company company that rhymes with shmapple that that don't have expandable memory as a feature. So so in other words, there's no slot for you to

put a memory card into. Oh well, we've already talked about ultra books, UM, which don't have in general, don't have optical drives. You know they they save space, save energy UM by not having that. And you know where you have a limited amount of storage on board, so you could you was something like a flash drive or a portable drive where you have a connection, um, but you you do need something to store files on otherwise you know, you're really not going to be able to

create stuff. Well, although granted most ultrabooks probably have significantly more storage on board than your typical at least you're free tier of cloud storage out there. Oh yes, definitely. But things like smartphones, I mean, here's an example. I'll give a real world example, because again this is a recording this and this phone was just announced on T Mobile was the HTC one S. It's an Android based phone running ice cream Sandwich. It has sixteen gigabytes on

board memory. Alright, sixteen gigs on board memory. No flash drive knows, no smart card drive at all, so you can't add more memory to it. That's sixteen gigs is all you get. However, ht C one S also comes with a trial period with Dropbox, which is another cloud based storage system. And we'll talk more about Dropbox a little bit later in this podcast. So in this case, you're talking about a smartphone that is encouraging you to use cloud based storage rather than some sort of physical media.

So that way you have this this your information is backed up into the cloud. And theoretically, when you are ready to upgrade your phone or switch phones, or maybe you lose your phone you have to get a new phone, you would still have access to that information because it exists on the cloud, not on a physical device in your hand. I mean it's it's on a physical device, it's just that physical device belongs to some other company.

So that's one of the other reasons why cloud storch is so important is that we're starting to see manufacturers kind of offload features onto the cloud so that they don't include them in the phone itself. It helps a little bit with phone design because it means that you don't need to build in that feature. You can actually make your phones slimmer and sleeker. I mean, Apple has been doing this for ages, but other companies are starting

to do the same sort of thing. Now, that's enough about cloud storage in general, I think, unless is there anything else that we need to talk about. There was one other thing I didn't want to uh to pass over it too much is UM. And this is something we've visited several times too, is the aspect of privacy. UM. You know, a couple of years ago when we were talking about this UM, you know, when we was starting to become a public topic. You know, hey, what is

cloud storage? What it was cloud computing? UM? You know, people didn't really get that and then when you explain it, they'd start thinking about the documents that you would store up there and privacy, what if somebody hacks in? Um. I think it's obvious at this point that the convenience, UM and accessibility of cloud storage has made it we were we've gone so far now that I don't think

we're going to go back. Um, but it's obviously. I just think it's interesting to note that at this point we are you know, there are things that we look at, you know, whether this this particular company is more uh likely to have of good security and privacy then the other company. But um, yeah, that's it's the security of these cloud storage uh services has become sort of a given.

Oh well, you know, if they're going to offer this, they better be offering security because I'm going to use the service, and you know, that's something I look for before I do that, so that that doesn't even seem that seems like a given now when before people are going I don't know if I want to do this or not. Yeah, we can talk a little bit about Google's approach to privacy and security. In fact, we will have to because there is a controversy that we we

will have to address. But before we do that, let's get into the basics of Google Drive. So it is built directly into Google Docs. Now, so Google Docs. The if you were to open up a Google Docs account, so which is just your regular Google account, that's what it's attached to. So if you have a Google account, congratulations,

you have a Google Docs account. You can go to Google Docs and create a document, whether that's a word document, word being, word processing document not where it is in Microsoft Word, but a word processing document, presentation spreadsheet, you know, all the basic types of office documents. Google has the

those as features. If you were to create one and save it, it it would save it into your Google Drive account and you would automatically get the the base free tier, which for Google Drive is five gigabytes of free storage. And the nice thing about this is that that doesn't count any of the documents in your Google Docs, so it doesn't know I didn't know that. That's interesting. That's

good to know. Uh the Now, what you can also do is you can download a client onto your desktop that allows you to drag and drop files from your computer into your Google Drive, so that you can easily port over if you've got say, uh, photo album on your computer and you like the photo album and you want to keep it, but you don't really want it taking up space on your local hard drive. You could copy it, or not copy it, but move it over

to your Google Drive and it would store there. It would have you have a folder within your Google Drive where you could access that, and you could access it with any web connected device that at least any web connected device, either through the web system or depending on the device, you might have a dedicated app that would let you access it. So for example, Google Drive, you can do that on PCs and max uh and you can do it on Android phones. And they're working on

the recording of this podcast. They were working on an iOS app so that you would be able to access it easily through your iPhone or iPod touch or iPad. And they also, from what I understand, I did see an article on a Linux website the other day that was quite upset that there was not compatibility built in for Linux as in as in a and a dedicated application.

From what I understand, they're working too. Of course, you know, if you're using Linux now and and you've probably already tried to use your drive with it, if you're you know, a Google customer. Um, you can of course use the web version. Um. But but they're working on a dedicated app.

From what I understand, that's that's the nice thing. Yeah, even if your your device doesn't have a dedicated app, you can still access Google Drive through the web portion, like you open up a browser and you can go to Google Drive that way. It's not quite as convenient, it's not as user friendly. Uh So, I mean that's why everyone wants the app, because then you know, you bypass that step of having to go through the web.

It's just like having an app on your phone that access a web based email client, so that you don't actually have to open up a browser and navigate to the email. You just open up the app and there you are. Same sort of thing. Chris and I have more to say about Google Drive, but before we do, let's take a quick break to thank our sponsor. Well, there's some other interesting aspects that are unique to to

the Google Cloud Drive. Because there's you know, like we said, there are a lot of different companies out there that offer comparable services, but they don't all have the same feature set. One of the things that sets Google apart is no surprise search. So let's say that you have a lot of files in your Google Drive. Let's say let's say that you are one of the people who you're you've got to upgrade your account because you've got a lot of data, and you've got lots of different

kinds of files. You've got picture files, videos, text documents, all that kind of stuff, and scanned documents, so maybe PDFs or other forms of scanned documents. You have it all in your Google Drive, and then one day you need a specific file and for the life that you can't remember what folder you saved it in, and you've got so many folders in this drive, it's going to

take you forever to find it. This is something that does not happen on an in free one basis at Shase Strickland Um, because I am very very good at filing things away safely, so safely I will never find them again. So Google Search is built into Google Drive, and they have gone so far as to start developing recognition software. So that let's say that you've scanned in

a lot of documents. Maybe you've got some old documents that are important to you, perhaps they're old family journals, and you scanned the pictures and you put them into your Google Drive, and you think, there's this great document that my grandfather wrote that is pertinent to this blog post i'm posting. It would be awesome if I if I posted a picture of that page, but gosh, I

can't remember where I saved it. Well, the image recognition software, it actually can scan the scanned documents and look for text. So if you type in an UM string, like you know that your grand father wrote about I'll give a real life example. Let's say my grandfather wrote about a massive tornado that completely devastated Gainesville, Georgia, which is true, really did happen. My grandfather was in a working in a mill at a time, and it ripped the roof

off the mill. My grandfather was very lucky to get out. Um So, let's say that he wrote this great article about it, and I had scanned it in I could type in Gainesville tornado in my Google uh search for for the Google Drive, and it's going to actually look and scan the the physical documents, the ones that are just image files really and return those as well, which is kind of cool. It's not just scanning the text

in your documents and scanning the images. They're also working on adding in the image recognition software that you can find in in products like Google Goggles. So with Google Goggles, you can hold up a smartphone with a camera to a particular kind of objects, sometimes like a landmark or whatever, and Google Goggles will use recognition software to try and

identify what that is. Same sort of thing. Let's say that you've taken a bunch of pictures of the Washington Monument and then you think, oh, there's this great picture of the Washington Monument I want to use, and I don't remember where I put it. You could search Washington Monument, and that image recognition software will include any images that Google identifies as the Washington Monument uh and pulls it back even if you didn't title the picture that so

the picture could be titled something different. It couldn't just have the date or some random string of letters and numbers. But because that image recognition software is part of Google Search, it can pull that up as well, which is a

really powerful tool. Now, Google does stress that both the image recognition software and the the scanning of of scanned files software both of that those technologies are in their early phases and may not work flawlessly, so uh, you know, mileage may vary essentially is what comes out of that. But that that is a differentiator is that you've got this amazing search tool. It turns out Google knows a thing or two about search. They've picked up a couple

of tricks that that's really cool. They needed to work on them. Yeah, no, they've they've got some good some good work there, and then they're also working there's there's all the collaborative features that you would get with Google Docs. So that's included with Google Drive. So assuming that people, uh you know that you give access to certain files to people, they should be able to make edits and everything they're working on, including some other features as well.

They've actually opened up the platform and they've created an API for for companies to add in their own features, so extensions and things. So you might be vocation programming interface. Yes, so you might be able eventually to do things like send facts from your Google Drive to a fax machine or to actually have edit videos with in your Google Drive itself, so you're not just letting people view a video, but perhaps even edit videos within the drive using this

third party application. But they're the the possibilities are nearly endless. Yeah. As a matter of fact, they have already made partnerships with some of these companies that that Jonathan is alluding to UM for the launch of Google Drive, and you can go. You can actually find it pretty easily when you go into your Google account that they have these uh, these applications that are ready to take advantage of this UM And as a matter of fact, um, there is

ah some of them have UM special deals. Now that that's kind of important to note. Uh, just just quickly that these third party companies are probably still going to charge you for their services. UM. So you know, it's not necessarily free, but it does work very very easily, and it is uh you know, synchronized with Google Drive, so it makes it very easy to do one from the other. Right now, your mileage may vary again again. Yeah, so let's talk a little bit about the tears that

the Google offers. No more tears. That's my Aussie Osborne reference for the day. Um, actually it's probably not. I'm sure I'll get a crazy train in there somewhere man or maybe war pigs. Maybe, I'm not sure how you're going to get that one. Maybe iron man. Uh, I mean, look, I can force a reference if I have to be the first time. Anyway, So the tears that Google offers, so you've got five gigabytes of free storage. Actually, let's back that up. Okay, Google makes its money. We're just

a little bit deep. Google makes its money from advertising. Yes, that's true. Google is an advertising company when you get down to it, or at least they they run advertising, right, So let's let's kind of take one step back and look at Google services. Okay, Google Docs, the previous Google Docs free. Yeah, female, that's free. Searches free to the user. UM. Android is free for people to uh to install on cell phones. Um. All this stuff is offered more or

less free to the consumer. This is one of the big changes. Because Google's competitors in this space, people like uh that Jonathan mentioned before, dropbox, Box formerly boxed, dot Net, Sugar Sinc. Sky Drive, sky Drive which is Microsoft's UM application for this. These guys all offer tears. There's an initial free smaller space, and then they are are tiered pricing.

So you get uh, you know, small for free, you get medium for a few dollars a month, you get large for a few more dollars a month, etcetera, etcetera. So this is new. Google hasn't done this with other products. Really, I can't think of one, uh where it offers tiered pricing like this. Nothing's pop being the mind immediately. I mean, you could make some arguments about Google Voice, but that's

a little different. That's a little different. Um. Yeah, so that's yeah, it is is something to make a call on Google Voice normally like over the phone. In general, it's free. Now, granted, what Google could have done is they could have offered the five gigabytes free storage, and that would have been it. But see for Google to offer huge amounts of storage for free would be well pretty soon Google, that would be eating into Google's revenue.

So it's understandable why they did what they did. Um and really, when we get into the comparisons, you'll see it's fairly comparable to the other services. Some offer less space for free, some offer more. But um, Dropbox, for example, is I would say, the for what it's worth, the eight pound gorilla, and yet that offers two gigabytes and starts at two gigabytes for friends. For friends, you get

five hundred megabytes per referral. And up to sixteen gigabytes extra storage, so you could have up to eight gigabytes for free if you referred that many friends to drop Box. Yeah so, uh but but getting back to it, the five gigabytes is free for any user. So if you have a Google account and you have five gigs free storage online right now, uh, if that's enough, then for about two dollars, and this is all at launch, I should say, because if you're listening to this podcast in

I'm sure the prices may be different. But for twenty for two dollars and forty nine cents a month, you can get five gigabytes of storage. For four dollars and ninety nine cents a month, you get a hundred gigabytes of storage. And if you're really really data hungry, for a cool forty nine nine a month, for nine dollars nine cents, you can get a terrabyte of storage online. So uh so yeah, for people who need way more space.

Let's say that you're that you do a lot of video editing, because you do a lot of liberation with other people with videos, and you want to have that ability for people to all look at it without it going live in any other way, Um, this would be pretty useful. And uh, again it's it's kind of comparable to what other companies offer. Uh, some of them don't have um as high amount of storage that actually, none of them offer as much storage as Google Drive does

at its highest tier. The highest tier that Google Drive offers is sixteen terabytes of storage, which is for seven a month. Yeah. Well, I would say that some of them I've seen essentially say hey, if you need if you really need more storage than this, give us a call and we'll work something out. Um. But yeah, and and there are there are a few things. Um. One you know, this isn't completely new because Google docs has allowed you to upload files like word Microsoft Word documents

for a little while now. But this is this is basically the formal, uh, the formal announcement that hey, we are going to offer you a certain amount of storage and this is how much it costs. So it's really a delineation of all of that. Um. Yeah. The maximum file size that you can upload to a Google Drive as assuming that you have that much space as ten gigabytes. Um. And uh, which is one of the larger actually, I think that's the largest file size among the the consumer

cloud storage, there's enterprise cloud storage. To Amazon offers enterprise level cloud storage. That's a different animal. Well, in a way it is, and in a way it isn't, because some of the other cloud services are using Amazon as their right story. So in some cases you are using Amazon Cloud storage, you're just using it through another company. But yeah, we can genius business model right there. We

can do some comparisons with the others. But first, before we did the comparisons, I wanted to talk a little bit about some controversy that popped up. So there are these things, these terms of service agreements that you know, standard across the web, and sometimes people read them, and when they do read them, sometimes they say, hey, that doesn't sound quite right. Um. So one of the problems

that came up are not even a problem. One of the one of the questions that popped up all had to do with part of the Google Drive terms of service, which said that anyone who would upload or submit content to Google Drive would grant Google and I quote 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, published publicly, perform publicly, display, and distribute such content end quote, which gave some people the fear that perhaps what Google was saying is if you upload your content to our service, we can do whatever we want to it. Now. In truth, that's not what Google meant. No,

and this is common. I actually found an article on c net where they had taken the terms of service from basically everybody, the major players in the cloud storage business, and there are clauses similar to that in many of them. And what they're basically saying is, um, you're giving us, Okay, you put the you put the file on the server. What they're saying is, you're going to allow us to make a thumbnail, a derivative work. You'll you'll let us capture the first page and make it small so you

can see what it looks like. They they have you have to give them some of these rights to allow you to access it from other computers, right to share it with other collaborators with exactly. And that's what I think they were trying to accomplish. But the way it was worded freaked people right out right now, And when you think about a little bit you realize without this permission,

Google drive would not work. Yeah, because you put it there and you couldn't get it back Google would Google wouldn't have the permission to display it in a way that would be useful to you. So, for example, let's go with the collaboration thing. Here's here's an example. And I think it was c net that wrote this example. Um, I want to say it was it was Google. I think that actually said here's here's what the h here's a use case scenario that will explain it. But I

think it was seen that that reported it said. All right, so imagine that you are collaborating with a screenwriter in China, and the screenwriter is writing in Chinese characters and you don't read Chinese. So when you open up the file, Google Translate translates the document from Chinese into English so that you can read it and it's in a format that that makes sense to you. Well, those that's changing that work, it's adapting it in the form of translating it.

And so this permission gives Google the rights to do that so that that document is actually used full to you. It's not Google says they're not planning on doing anything like taking your work that you have uploaded, changing it around and then selling it somewhere. That's that's not the purpose of this language. The purpose is just so that the features within Google Drive are legal because you have permitted Google to do it. Yeah, or or using it

in ads. Now. I've seen some people say that they have seen their stuff being used in ads that are being shown to them, um, but that whether it goes beyond those people, I haven't heard anything about that, So I'm not certain exactly how accurate that is, um, because you know, they do collect quite a bit of information on you, and they really probably wouldn't need to look at your documents to be able to target advertising to

you and your interests. Yeah, I mean, it's also it's also important that you know that these permissions also allow Google to do things like scan all your documents so that if you need to search them, they can turn results on those searches. Otherwise, again, you wouldn't be able to search anything. You would just have to go through all that huge pile of files and find what you needed. Again, it's useful, it's a useful feature, but in order to

do that, you have to grant them those those those commissions. Yeah, because if you don't then uh then legally Google would be unable to provide that, at least not without breaking the law. We've got a little bit more about Google Drive to cover, but before we get there, let's take

another quick break to thank our sponsor. I think in the last day or so, the tempers have cooled, but people are still saying, well, okay, fine, but the way it's written is very broad, and it could be allowed, It could allow opening the door to doing these things. So they're saying that Google was a little reckless is probably a strong word, but they were a little uh vague in terms, and and it does grant them those

permissions where they could theoretically do that. But again, these terms are very similar to the ones used by just about everybody else out there. I remember almost identical story from a couple of years ago, and I can't remember

what the company was. It might have even been Google again, but I remember distinctly that there was a discussion about this sort of thing and how people were worried that they were handing their rights over to another company, when in truth, what was going on was just like this. It was it was the permissions were there so that the service could display the work and the way it needed to be displayed for it to be useful and uh and so ultimately it just boiled down to know,

we're not selling your stuff. We just need this permission or else there's no service. We we literally cannot do what we need to do for us to be useful. So um yeah, no need to panic, although it's always good to question just in case. I mean, you know, Google does still have that that motto of don't be evil, but you never know well or evil is kind of an interesting thing that itself is not entirely uh like one one man's definition of evil may be different from another's.

And I've heard it clarified, um prime that that was really intended to mean, don't manipulate search results to facilitate advertising, and it was specifically geared towards that, So you know, keep your eyes it's always going to keep your eyes open. Yeah, No, it's it's always important to question. That's not what we meant. So let's go on to talking a little bit about how Google drives stacks up against other cloud storage services.

So with the free storage with five gigabytes free storage, that puts it on the same playing ground as services like Box and Sugar Sinc. Both of those offer five gigs as well. Dropbox is a little less, is two gigabytes, but again, if you start referring other people and they joined the service, you get five megabytes per referral up to a maximum sixteen gigs, So you could in theory have way more storage for free on Dropbox than you

would on these other services. Microsoft sky Drive is at seven gigabytes, but people who had sky Drive accounts previous to Google Drives Launch can have up to gigabytes for free. Yes, but that offer is being made for a limited time, so if you had that and you want to keep that, you might want to go quickly over there too. In fact, by the time this podcast publishes, there may very well be late, too late, very um so in that case

we're sorry anyway. The the minimum upgrade, so the smallest step that you can make from free to a paid service is uh as a little different depending on the the service. So for Google Drive it's two dollars and forty nine cents per month for gigs of storage. For for drop Box, you get the lowest step is fifty gigabytes of storage for nine dollars and ninety nine cents a month, So if you're breaking it down per gig,

then Google Drive is cheaper, although you get less storage. Uh. Box is twenty five gigabytes, so same amount as Google Drive, same amount storage, but for nine dollars nine nine cents a month, so it's more expensive. Sugar Sink is thirty gigabytes of storage for four dollars and ninety nine cents a month, so uh, it's you get you get five gigabytes more storage, but it's um it's essentially twice the

price of Google Drive. And then um sky Drive is twenty gigabytes for ten dollars a year, which is actually, uh, it's a little less storage than Google Drive. But Google Drive at tot nine a month, you multiply that by twelve months, then you're like, oh well, Microsoft sky Drive in away is a little cheaper. Um. So that's how

those stack up. And also the maximum file size limit Google Drive blows the others out of the water, except for Sugar Sink, which does not technically have a file size limit, but the but box is limit is a hundred megabytes, so that's that's not too big. Drop Box and sky Drive both have a limit of two gigabytes for a file size. UH. The UH, Sugar Sinc, drop Box, sky Drive, and Google Drive are all compatible both with

Windows and Mac. Box is a business enterprise UM service, so primarily I mean you can you can get one if you want one. Uh. All of them have iPhone apps, except for Google Drive right now, but Google drives working on it. Uh. The only one that doesn't have an Android app out of the of the ones I've listed is sky Drive, Microsoft SkyDrive. Everything else has an Android app already out on the market. Windows Phone, well, here's a dock. Microsoft sky Drive has a Windows Phone app,

but Google Drive doesn't, Dropbox doesn't, Box doesn't. Sugar Sinks is supposedly coming out, so maybe by the time this podcast because Live Sugar Sink will have THEIRS. UM. They all are. They all have web access, so you can access the service over the web, So even if your device does not have an application that is native to that device, you can still get there over the web,

assuming you have a browser. UH. And all of them allow for public file sharing, so that you can actually let other folks see what's in your drive or see specific files that you have, you know, enabled public sharing.

You can also do private file sharing with all of them, so that if you want to have just a group of collaborators, let's say you're all working on a project together and you want to be able to look at everyone else's UM information on a particular file, you can do that, and then the public itself would be shielded. They would not be able to see that UM and most of them offer some sort of collaborative document editing, although you might have to use proprietary apps in order

to do it. Drop Bucks does not, it's more of a storage feature than collaboration. Sugar Sinc. Also doesn't, but sky Drive, Box and Google Drive all do UM. And then there are a couple of other UH features like the third party apps UM integration. That's that's pretty much standard across the board. Sky Drive is specifically going to be for Windows eight apps, so but others are you know,

pretty much unfettered. So that's kind of how it boils down to the other major cloud services that are out there, and there's there's more than that. That's just that's just a handful of them. Oh yeah, I've I've got different applications for several of them, including UH A Bunto one, which is offered by Canonical primarily for Linux users. And you know, there are there are others out there they're trying UM and people have a question whether or not

these services are going to continue into the future. UM. I think Google Drive may end up being a model for what's going to be happening. Google Drive and sky Drive basically are you know, sort of hybrids of online collaboration,

software and storage. UM. So the pure storage players like Dropbox and Sugar Sink may have a difficult time competing with them in the future, especially since they're owned by uh, you know, sky Driving and um Google Driver are you know, big players, and they've got a whole lot of money to throw at these these um different applications, so you know, creating larger and larger file storage for free, offering those

services for free. Um. You know, it may not be very long at all before Google and Microsoft are offering you ten gigabytes UM or you know, or more than that. And of course, you know, Apple is doing something very similar with the the um I work sweet too, So um it's very possible that the big players in the industry may run off with it and and the pure storage guys sort of followed by the wayside. I would say that is a very very real possibility, but probably

not for another year or two at least. Um, just as people decide what it is they want to do with these systems. If they end up using just storage, you know, hey, I'd rather create a document on my desktop and then share it with my collaborators on the on the drive rather than you know, us working on

a document in the cloud in my web browser. I think, Um, I think the real problem for the consumer in the short term is going to be, uh, figuring out where the heck your data is if you're using multiple, um, multiple services. I do have that problem, yeah, because if you I have Dropbox and I have Google Drive, those are the only two that I'm using. I've got like six or seven. Yeah. I resisted that temptation because I knew what would happen. But it's the problem you have.

The problem you have within one drive is multiplied when you have multiple drives. So that's like that's like you come home and you don't know what which computer has the file that you need on it. So you've got four computers in your house for some reason. Uh, like you live in my house for example. Actually I think I've got more than four, but anyway, I think i've got five. Anyway, let's say that you've got five computers

at your house. Then let's they got five computers in my house, and that I have a file saved on one of those computers. Then comes the fun part of going to each computer and figuring out where it is. The same problem. If you're using multiple cloud storage services, you're gonna have to go and do search for each one.

That The benefit to it is that you can at least do that search from one machine, as long as that one machine can access each of the services you're using, and if they all have web based access and you've got a web browser, then you've got that problem solved, even if it's not the most elegant solution, but still means that you have to check each one of the drives and figure out where you have it, and then you might even fall into that same trap you had

before where you might have duplicate files. You might have one instance on one drive and another instance on another drive. So um yeah, that's that's gonna be a problem too, is that if you use a lot of these services, then you still have to have some sort of discipline when it comes to data management. Maybe you only use one for one particular type of file and use another for a different one. In that way, at least you

reduce that confusion. Me what I think I'm gonna end up doing is I'm going to pick one, and I haven't decided which yet, although let's be honest, Google Drive is probably the lead simply because I have a lot of products that run Android, so you know, I'm kind of locked into that in ecosystem already. But I haven't completely decided yet. So let's say, you know, whichever one I decide on, I'm going to eventually move all my things,

all of the things. I'm going to move all of the things into that folder, and then I'm just gonna get rid of the others, so that way I don't have that issue. And that concludes this classic episode about Google Drive. I hope you guys enjoyed it. If you have any suggestions about future topics for tech Stuff, send me an email. The address is tech Stuff at how stuff works dot com, or pop on over to our website that's tech Stuff podcast dot com. You'll find an

archive of all of our older shows. You'll find links to our presence on social media. You'll find a link to our online merchandise store. Every purchase you make there goes to help the show, which we greatly appreciate. And I will talk to you again and really soon. Text Stuff is a production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.