Google Rolls Out Online Storage Services

An anonymous reader writes "The associated press reports that Google is slated to provide online storage at a price. From the article: 'Web search and Internet services company Google Inc. on Friday began selling expanded online storage, targeted for users with large picture, music or video file collections. The prices range from $20 per year for 6 gigabytes of online storage; $75 per year for 25 gigabytes of storage; $250 per year for 100 gigabytes of storage; and $500 per year for 250 gigabytes of storage.' Is this too expensive for what there offering, or are you going to make use of it?"

Old new: It's called gmail

[Bomarc]

See: http://www.viksoe.dk/code/gmail.htm [viksoe.dk]

Is that all they're offering?

[eln]

So I read the article, and all it says is that the stuff you store can be used with Google products like Picasa, Gmail, Google Docs, etc. But, can't anything I store on my own hard drive be uploaded to those apps too?

I can get 500 GB of local storage for $100, and I don't have to worry about what some corporation is going to do with my data. If the only "advantage" to Google's storage is that I can use it with their products, what's the point? Surely Google must have something more to offer than the article states. As it stands, this looks like a great deal if it were 1998, but not so much today.

Doomed

[Anonymous Coward]

Way too expensive. Portable hard drives (or soon, larger capacity flash drives) are already all the rage: they are cheaper, faster, and aren't limited by the user's broadband internet connection. What was Google thinking on this one?

Amazon S3

[Usquebaugh]

I use Amazon S3 through Gorilla Disk. I also use it directly through Python and Ruby.

Amazon has it right in this instance. The cost is less and is dynamic.

I'm looking at starting a small app hosting company and S3 will definitely work better than Google, my costs grow with my business, no upfront expenses etc.

What does google offer...

[vigmeister]

That a $200 computer I can build with 750GB of storage and is always online cannot?

Given the occasional inaccessibility of GMail, if this data is not ALWAYS AVAILABLE, I don't see the point of the exercise. The only other advantage I can see are download speeds, but upload speeds are getting better day by day. If I pool with 3-4 other people for a solid internet connection (or if I am in college), I am all set...

Expensive and unreliable?

[FlyByPC]

For one, it's expensive; you could buy many times the storage by buying the hardware yourself; it would be cheaper to go with RAID-1 and replace the drives every year whether they needed it or not.

Also, even assuming that Google's new service is:

• trustworthy (I.E. they don't peek at your data),
• reliable,
• secure (hackerproof and disasterproof; aren't they based in CA?), and
• speedy (and it ain't ever gonna be as fast as a locally-attached HD)

...there's still the question of your own Internet connection; I for one don't want to lose access to my files every time my cable connection decides it needs a day off. It's been pretty reliable lately, but still.

On the "trustworthy" issue, I trust Google as much as just about any company -- but I don't trust anyone 100%, so why risk it?

Bottom line -- call me a dinosaur (OK, it fits; I enjoy BASIC and Assembler), but I'd rather do it myself.

Yeah, yeah, you say -- but what about portable storage? OK, I admit, this would be convenient -- but I still think the drawbacks (even money being no object) far outweigh bringing the data you need with you. Heck, for that money, you could seriously think about one of those new solid-state drives! How's that for reliability?

Re:Well,

[Anonymous Coward]

I've always had an issue with online storage. Sure, you have a massive capacity. But, think about the time it takes you to upload, download, etc. For the $500 a year pricetag on the 250gb drive, I could go out and purchase a few 250gb external drives. Although online storage is great for protecting against a physical disaster, it's simply too clumsy right now to be used effectively.

If you have a slow Internet connection (under 10Mbps upstream) and think that $500 annual fee is a lot for 250GB online space, you may not be in Google's target group. Go ahead and buy external disks, but it's not an option to those needing lots of high availability online disk space.

Re:Doomed

[WombatDeath]

I can see myself signing up to something like this: it's basically an inexpensive way to ensure that the stuff I really want to keep is safe and available. I trust Google's back-up processes far more than I trust my own, and this way I don't have to piss about with external storage which can be lost/damaged/stolen.

Dreamhost

[Master of Transhuman]

has a "Files Forever" service where you pay I think around $2.50 per GB ONE TIME and they host the files forever. You can also sell access to those files to other people using their service.

I think $500/year for 250GB which works out to $2.00/year/GB isn't too bad, but it's annual. Dreamhost is ONCE.

MegaUpload gives you 250GB of storage for $70 for TWO years which is a mere $3/month or $35/year or a bit over one cent a month per GB.

One consideration would be risk, however - we expect Google to be around in two years. Do we know for sure that other companies would be? Of course, that is only relevant if your storage company is being used as the only store for those files - if merely used for backup, it's not relevant.

cost (in)effective

[belunar]

"$75 per year for 25 gigabytes of storage; $250 per year for 100 gigabytes of storage; and $500 per year for 250 gigabytes of storage.' Is this too expensive for what there offering, or are you going to make use of it?"

Um...ok, using pricewatch for estimates, for $75 I can get a 250GB USB or a 320GB SATA drive, for $100 one can get a 400GB USB or a 500GB SATA drive, and for less than $500 you can get 4 500GB USB or 5 500GB SATA drives. How is this cost effective?

Re:Is that all they're offering?

[idiocracy]

Sucks wins

Nice:
1) remote availability: files online to transfer or get access when out and about
2) remote backup

Sucks:
1) expensive: I can get a 500GB drive from frys for $100
2) privacy: do I really want google to know even more about me; yes send me more ads; yes turn over my files when the feds come for it [you better encrypt it]
3) reliability:
  A) GMail goes down so I assume I will not always have access to these files [I cannot put important files there and expect to access them as needed]
  B) My connection goes down (mine does)
4) Hassle: syncing between files
5) Secure: come on you know people are going to try to get at this
6) Speed: depends on scenario, but in general this would be torturous

Doesn't Dell, Apple... do this already?

I do not trust Google [or any other company] and their services that much.
RAID and portable storage may not be utopia but work for me.

Re:Save your money...

[Master of Transhuman]

"I just don't see how this offering competes - not for tech-saavy individuals at least."

You answered your own question. None of these plans are for techies. They're for people who can't figure out how to do all that stuff a techie would do.

A lot of small businesses and home users aren't going to be storing their stuff on their own machines (by definition, a risk) using SSH and rsync. Maybe they should be using something like Storegrid (an rdiff-backup-like client/server solution) and a Web site, but they'd need a consultant to come up with that idea. They'd never figure it out.

But they know Amazon and Google - so these services, that have economies of scale in purchasing hard drives, can easily offer a useful service to these people, even if it costs two or three times more than what a techie would spend on an equivalent solution.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Comparing Google Purchased Storage with Amazon

[MushMouth]

uh, do you instantly put 6 gigs on? Do you need to pay up front for future growth? It seems like you have some poor assumptions of real world use. Also since thie Google service only interoperates with google apps, you should instead consider the use of S3 with EC2, which does not induce bandwidth charges.

Re:To provide actual data...

[LurkerXXX]

Yup. It's the upload/download bandwidth that's the issue with a lot of storage. My low end DSL is pretty much worthless for uploading (and not that awful much better for downloading).

Personally I just buy a spare hard drive (you can 500GB for ~$100 now, it's insane), back up everything I need to, and drop off the spare drive at my sister's house (stored in her basement) the next time I go visit her, so I'm covered if my place gets robbed or burned down.

If we all had massive bandwidth available the online deals might be good, but for most of us, 500 GB would simply take way way too long to upload or download.

Re:To provide actual data...

[LurkerXXX]

and it's possible to restore the computer from bare metal in short order.

No, not in my case it's not. I can drive to my sisters house 70 miles away and be back with the backup drive days and days before I could retrieve the backups over my DSL line.

I care how long it takes to retrieve the data as well as how long it takes to upload it. What works for you may not work for me.

who really cares?

I do.