Google Drive in a sea of well established competitors

Google Drive in a sea of well established competitors

In case you are not aware, Google will make 5 Gig of cloud drive storage free to each user. It will occur towards the end of April 2012 and I have installed it. I will be experimenting with the drive and giving my reflections. For now, let me share some good articles to read from some friends of mine:

• 50 Addictive Twitter Feeds for Marketing Majors 50 Addictive Twitter Feeds for Marketing Majors
• 31 Great Ways Universities Are Using Google+ 31 Great Ways Universities Are Using Google+
• 100 Serious Twitter Tips for Academics 100 Serious Twitter Tips for Academics
• 8 Reasons to Take Your Daughter or Son to Work 8 Reasons to Take Your Daughter or Son to Work

Google is the new kid on the block – as far as public cloud storage is concerned. In the article Cloud Storage Booming, But Trouble is on the Horizon Cloud storage article , they list some formidable competitors:

• Microsoft
• SkyDrive
• Dropbox
• SugarSync

They did miss mentioning a couple very important players, which are Amazon Cloud Drive and Apple Icloud. Unfortunately, it appears you need to have an Apple product to set up the Apple cloud. Yet Amazon is a nice surprise and I will be covering it.

Here are some recent posts covering the topic:

• 5 Reasons Microsoft SkyDrive is Better Than Google Drive 5 Reasons Microsoft SkyDrive is Better Than Google Drive
• How to Choose Between Cloud Storage Services like Google Drive and Dropbox How to Choose Between Cloud Storage Services like Google Drive and Dropbox
• Google Drive vs Dropbox vs Microsoft SkyDrive Google Drive vs Dropbox vs Microsoft SkyDrive
• Is Google Drive worse for privacy than iCloud, Skydrive, and Dropbox? Is Google Drive worse for privacy than iCloud, Skydrive, and Dropbox?

Now for some reflections on the major solution providers I looked into:

Amazon Cloud Drive

They do offer you 5 gig of free storage. But there is a major hurdle. They do not map a drive to your computer, like you see with others like Dropbox, Google Drive and Microsoft SkyDrive. If they should change this in the future, I will look into it again.

SugarSync

They do offer file synchronization. But I don’t plan to use them as a backup – nor would I consider a vendor backup solution. They best thing to do is to visit Wal-Mart or Amazon and buy a terabyte external 3.0 hard drive. You can then use either your Windows or security suite software (i.e. Norton) to do weekly back ups.

Dropbox

I’ve been using Dropbox for some time now. They do map a drive to your computer. One thing I like is there is an alert when a file is updated. So if I update a file on computer A, I get a notification on computer B.

Google Drive

I have just installed it and so far, it looks a lot like Dropbox. Here are a couple of comparison charts created by SugarSync and Microsoft:

• Microsoft comparison chart Microsoft comparison chart
• SugarSync comparison chart SugarSync comparison chart

I like what I see.

Microsoft SkyDrive

SkyDrive is also a good product. Like Google Drive and Dropbox, it maps a drive to your computer.

Summary

For now, I will run the free versions of Dropbox, Google Drive and SkyDrive between my two computers. I’ll also do weekly backups to the terabyte external drives using the Windows backup services. Perhaps I can share more insights in the near future

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