having 2 factor authentication protect my files is as good as it'll get. i COULD create an encrypted container via truecrypt or something, but i don't have anything that sensitive that is going to be store on my 'Drive'
2-factor authentication is not encryption. Some people do have something "that sensitive" that could be store on Google Drive if encryption were an option. Ideally without Google having a "master key" to decrypt the data.
It would be a nice feature, even if a premium account would be required to enable encryption.
I think part of their philosophy is that it's not just streams of bytes they're storing, it's meaningful content they can manipulate/serve in special ways: Picasa photos can be viewed in a gallery and resized and so forth, Amazon Cloud Player MP3s can be played, Office docs can open in Microsoft's web apps--even Dropbox has photo galleries. But I bet there will be a day when there's a more security-oriented (and geek-oriented? enterprise-IT-oriented?) option.
SpiderOak does understand and, unlike DropBox, they do not hold the key!. It is encrypted on your device and then sent. They cannot decrypt it so they cannot respond to a court order. If you want encryption, look at them - it runs on all popular platforms.
In the settings for the Android app (an upgrade of the Docs app), you can choose to encrypt the cached content on your gadget. Not what you want here, and probably only helpful in some fairly narrow circumstances. (If you really need security, you probably want to encrypt and PIN-lock the tablet/phone (with mail, browser cookies, and so on) and get some remote-erase software on it.)
So you post about this but no dedicated post about the vastly better and improved SkyDrive or the new apps for SkyDrive? Just some quick mention at the end.
The new storage plans are 3-5 times more expensive than the old ones. The prices for the old storage plans were last reduced in 2009, almost two years ago. In the intervening time, hasn't storage generally become denser and cheaper (notwithstanding the temporary hard drive shortages due to flooding in Thailand)? What gives, Google?
And AnandTech, this would be a great topic for some investigative journalism. How does Google increasing the price of their storage by 3-5 times (depending on amount of storage) as compared to prices they last set two years ago? If anything, storage density is doubling roughly every two years, so they should have CUT prices, not increased them by incredible amounts!
They have updated the service offering new capabilities that were previously not offered; chief among those syncing. This increases the server hardware costs and possibly the amount of copies of a bit required to use the data in this way. So they increased the data storage costs to match the new feature set. That said they are pretty close to the cheapest on the market; so I don't see any reason why they won't get away with it.
iCloud is not a storage locker. it syncs data across applications. Not the same thing at all as Dropbox etc and I don't know why people call it a competitor.
Yeah, look at this doozy of a paragraph in Google Drive's Terms of Service:
"Your Content in our Services: 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 that we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content."
Maybe I'm off base and that's par for the course for cloud services, but that absolutely kills any desire for me to use Google Drive (or any cloud service, if that's the way they all operate).
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jaydee - Tuesday, April 24, 2012 - link
"Storage upgrades are available starting at $2.49 a month for 100GB, $4.99 a month for 50GB, and so on all the way up to $799.99 a month for 16GB"???
Andrew.a.cunningham - Tuesday, April 24, 2012 - link
Thank you for immortalizing that awful, awful sentence. Dunno what I was thinking. :-)Prices should be correct now.
Jeff7181 - Tuesday, April 24, 2012 - link
Are there any encryption options?webmastir - Tuesday, April 24, 2012 - link
having 2 factor authentication protect my files is as good as it'll get. i COULD create an encrypted container via truecrypt or something, but i don't have anything that sensitive that is going to be store on my 'Drive'Jeff7181 - Tuesday, April 24, 2012 - link
2-factor authentication is not encryption. Some people do have something "that sensitive" that could be store on Google Drive if encryption were an option. Ideally without Google having a "master key" to decrypt the data.It would be a nice feature, even if a premium account would be required to enable encryption.
shabby - Tuesday, April 24, 2012 - link
It boggles the mind that none of the cloud storage lockers have any encryption options, wonder why that is.Zoomer - Tuesday, April 24, 2012 - link
Nobody understands/cares.Nanobaud - Tuesday, April 24, 2012 - link
Because for $5/month, users will expect them to go to court and mount a defense everytime some government wants to force them to decrypt something.twotwotwo - Tuesday, April 24, 2012 - link
I think part of their philosophy is that it's not just streams of bytes they're storing, it's meaningful content they can manipulate/serve in special ways: Picasa photos can be viewed in a gallery and resized and so forth, Amazon Cloud Player MP3s can be played, Office docs can open in Microsoft's web apps--even Dropbox has photo galleries. But I bet there will be a day when there's a more security-oriented (and geek-oriented? enterprise-IT-oriented?) option.MrEgo - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - link
Yes, Microsoft already has that available, and it's been available for several years. It's called SharePoint.darwinosx - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - link
We are talking about consumer products which Sharepoint isn't.Also Sharepoint sucks. But it sucks a little less than everything else out there.
statprof - Thursday, April 26, 2012 - link
SpiderOak does understand and, unlike DropBox, they do not hold the key!. It is encrypted on your device and then sent. They cannot decrypt it so they cannot respond to a court order. If you want encryption, look at them - it runs on all popular platforms.Zoomer - Tuesday, April 24, 2012 - link
Probably TLS?twotwotwo - Tuesday, April 24, 2012 - link
In the settings for the Android app (an upgrade of the Docs app), you can choose to encrypt the cached content on your gadget. Not what you want here, and probably only helpful in some fairly narrow circumstances. (If you really need security, you probably want to encrypt and PIN-lock the tablet/phone (with mail, browser cookies, and so on) and get some remote-erase software on it.)B3an - Tuesday, April 24, 2012 - link
So you post about this but no dedicated post about the vastly better and improved SkyDrive or the new apps for SkyDrive? Just some quick mention at the end.http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/skydrive/compar...
EnerJi - Tuesday, April 24, 2012 - link
The new storage plans are 3-5 times more expensive than the old ones. The prices for the old storage plans were last reduced in 2009, almost two years ago. In the intervening time, hasn't storage generally become denser and cheaper (notwithstanding the temporary hard drive shortages due to flooding in Thailand)? What gives, Google?And AnandTech, this would be a great topic for some investigative journalism. How does Google increasing the price of their storage by 3-5 times (depending on amount of storage) as compared to prices they last set two years ago? If anything, storage density is doubling roughly every two years, so they should have CUT prices, not increased them by incredible amounts!
deeceefar2 - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - link
They have updated the service offering new capabilities that were previously not offered; chief among those syncing. This increases the server hardware costs and possibly the amount of copies of a bit required to use the data in this way. So they increased the data storage costs to match the new feature set. That said they are pretty close to the cheapest on the market; so I don't see any reason why they won't get away with it.ajp_anton - Tuesday, April 24, 2012 - link
Are you sure 16TB is $799.99, $1.59 more expensive than 160 packages of 100MB? =)And why do prices always end with lots of 9's...
darwinosx - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - link
iCloud is not a storage locker. it syncs data across applications. Not the same thing at all as Dropbox etc and I don't know why people call it a competitor.kyuu - Thursday, April 26, 2012 - link
Yeah, look at this doozy of a paragraph in Google Drive's Terms of Service:"Your Content in our Services: 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 that we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content."
Maybe I'm off base and that's par for the course for cloud services, but that absolutely kills any desire for me to use Google Drive (or any cloud service, if that's the way they all operate).