GMail Drive Shell Extension

krmpradeep writes "GMail Drive is a Shell Namespace Extension that creates a virtual filesystem around your Google GMail account, allowing you to use GMail as a storage medium. GMail Drive creates a virtual filesystem on top of your Google GMail account and enables you to save and retrieve files stored on your GMail account directly from inside Windows Explorer. GMail Drive literally adds a new drive to your computer under the My Computer folder, where you can create new folders, copy and drag'n'drop files to."

Nice, but doomed

[BristolCream]

This won't last long. One of the reaosns Google and others can offer so much space is that they're confident that it won't be used.

Re:It came out, has thousands of members

[ebooher]

Probably, consider that while the product is in Beta they can guarantee that they will make no service level oriented promises. This gives them the opportunity to play around with all kinds of new tech that they may be able to spin off into a money maker while at the same time being able to completely walk away if it melts down.

Re:Nice, but doomed

[polecat_redux]

This won't last long.

They may have tolerated the concept if it had remained within the realm of Linux, but now that the Windows floodgates are open, I suspect that they will put an end to this very quickly.

Re:It came out, has thousands of members

[metlin]

Well, that's the idea isn't it?

And Google is doing a brilliant job of it, IMHO.

Release a product out in the open, let people hack up everything they can that is possible and merely observe and tweak the product without breaking it (come on, "it's in Beta" argument).

And once the product is reasonably stable, release it as a proper version with all the features and viola! You won't be breaking the system for a while, you've eliminated a large number of potential hacks such as this one and your system is already widely adopted.

Personally, that's the idea of Beta, and I'm happy that there is atleast *one* company out there who hold true to that principle.

Re:Works as advertised

[ebooher]

While I will admit that the concept of having a drive on your desktop that lives somewhere other than your local machine is neat, it isn't really a stretch of the technology, is it?

I mean, Apple has had iDisk since even before Mac OS X came out on the scene, I was using it to keep my documents synced at school when I was still using Mac OS 8 (I think.... may have been early 9)

Also, I *know* there was another "freebie" website a couple of years ago that did something very similar that allowed you to connect to their storage via a drive icon in My Computer on Windows.

And we won't even start on *NIX networked file systems ..... But I think this is going to be a very big gotcha for the service. It will really get some crazy attention now. However, I hope earlier /. posts I saw about "How soon before script kiddies and pirates use this as file repositories" don't start immediately coming true. Kill it before it even starts.

Why this won't survive.

[opspin]

Has anyone thought about what will happen once this thing gets spread around.

- Who says you can't "share" your drive with others?

Pirates will now have a 1Gig online-drive that they can stuff with movies+warez etc.
All hosted by google on high speed connections.

- So now we have a 1Gig web drive, but why stop there?

With invites to one self and other "friends", you could create a fair ammount of gmail
accounts, and with not too much effort, this program could probably be hacked to
provide access to all of those gmail accounts at once.

Wupti, and google is now hosting a 100+ gig warez server..

Although a great idea, this is doomed to fail..

Tried it a bit...

[chrispyman]

This piece of software is really nothing more than a nifty hack. It basically sends an e-mail to yourself with the file as an attachment and uses a funky subject format to determine the "Gmail drive" filesystem. It does work, but it can't support files bigger than 10MB. So, nice try for now, but perhaps a feature to "zip & split" big files is in order. That said, don't expect Google to let this app last for that long :-(

Re:Nice, but doomed

[jeffb]

I wouldn't hedge my bets. It is, after all Google -- they have a lot of machines (worldwide), networked together by a solid infrastructure (that many of us could only dream of) and all other things considered, disk space is pretty inexpensive.

Then again, even though there may be no problem with everyone fully utilizing the space that's available, Google may take offence at you violating their TOS in order to do so. :)

I can see it now...

[MajorG17]

Just wait until someone invites themself for 120 GMail addresses... then 1000... then starts SHARING terabytes of copyrighted data... eah, this may not last long.

I'm amused.

[Awptimus Prime]

I'm having a great time reading this thread. The same people who say things like "I would never run IE" are coming out and acting thrilled about this. What about the requirement of having IE to run this? I guess it is okay when it has something to do with Gmail. Hmmmm.

Selective zealotry at its worse.

Abusing Google?

[adolfojp]

GMail is an excellent web mail service. In fact, it is the best one that I have ever used. They pay for the service and make a profit by pasting ads on their webmail site.

If we use GMail in this fashion, not only are we abusing their trust but also dooming the service and perhaps destroying it.


Cheers,

Adolfo

Re:Nice, but doomed

[sik0fewl]

They already have a cache of the entire [public] Internet. What makes you think they can't handle this?

GDrive?

[adolfojp]

I just used the program and was simply astonished. Kind of reminds me of the days of X-Drive and such.

Perhaps Google should launch GDrive and provide a web page from where you can upload files to your account. Ok, don't give 1GB, but I think that 50MB should be enough to carry around your bussiness presentations and college writings.


Cheers,

Adolfo

Re:I'm amused.

[Anonymous Coward]

Every had enough of a clue to think that the people that rubbish IE are *different* from the people who are thrilled about this?

I know there's a lot of group-think on slashdot, but it still doesn't mean that we're all a single hive-mind.

Re:Huh...

[julesh]

I wonder how he did this for Windows.

Its a kludge. It only works through the shell, the same as Windows XP's "compressed folder" system that lets you do stuff with ZIP files. You have to copy the files locally before you can open them.

I don't know if OSX supports such a ridiculous concept, but if it does it would probably be easier to implement than a full filesystem.

Re:I'm amused.

[julesh]

Maybe slightly ironic, but I highly doubt any of them are running a recent Windows system that doesn't have IE installed. Too much shit breaks if you don't.

I also don't think you'll have to _use_ IE for it to work. I suspect it just relies on some of IE's DLLs, most probably URLMON for making the requests to gmail.

Re:What about the ToS?

[julesh]

Google don't take full rights to your e-mail. You're thinking of hotmail.

Re:Nice, but doomed

[strider44]

actually I think the volume of people who would actually use this is larger in linux!

Just because you CAN doesn't mean you SHOULD

[Artifex]

I find this to be an abuse of the resources Google has provided. They're going to have to end up making the interface and access more restrictive for all users as a result.

Re:For Slashdot Too!

[Anonymous Coward]

> GMail isn't a "public good", it's a marketing
> gimmick created by a company trying to get
> market share.

Tell that to the tens of thousands of people who already depend on gMail as their primary email. What are they called again? Oh yes, the "public." And would you say they regard a huge free email account as something "bad" or something "good"?

There are so many companies who do bad things right and left, and that deserve to get kicked in the teeth. Google continually offers innovative projects that vastly improve the public good; why spend energy kicking them in the teeth, too?

On another matter, the original post about a Slashdot drive was the funniest and most insightful post I've read here in months.

Re:For Slashdot Too!

[Anonymous Coward]

Bravo. You read the occasional funny thing here and there on /. but that was funny AND insightful. Just in case the mod points weren't enough, think of this as a little more affirmation.

Re:Cool hack...

[Anonymous Coward]

"But would you trust it? Would you REALLY want to use a hack on top of something that somebody else provided for free for your mission-critical data?"

Compared to what?

Compared to the ancient, cheap hard-disk in your computer that's starting to click when you access files?

Compared to the local disks that you wipe each time you upgrade your operating-system?

Compared to the CD you just sat on, or the CDs that're sitting in the sunlight?

Compared to your iPod with it's "steal me" white headphones?

Or compared to using all of the above, nicely located in the same building for the convenience of thieves, fires, and floods?

Re:Abusing Google?

[Illserve]

You'll care if they start charging you for it.

Re:Nice, but doomed

[anthony_dipierro]

disk space is pretty inexpensive

Disk space is pretty inexpensive, but the kind of bandwidth this filessystem will likely use isn't. I'm sure google is already spending more on bandwidth than hard drive space. With people transferring all these files without even looking at an ad, it's bound to cost them a lot of money.

Re:Nice, but doomed

[Teppy]

Storage costs $0.50/G these days, and all drives are faster than network storage. Why anyone would add another piece of duct tape to their Windows box to save fifty cents is beyond me. Cool hack, but that's about it.

Re:I'm amused.

[Anonymous Coward]

So, what's your replacement for shdocvw, responsible for such things as the file views in open and save dialogs, and which is a fundamental part of IE?