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Comparison of FREE Cloud Storage services.
IainB:
EDIT: 2015-06-07 0524hrs: Title of this opening post was changed to reflect what this thread seems to be turning into.
OneDrive v. Google Drive?
I have been mulling over this comparison for a while.
As far as I am aware, OneDrive does not muck about with (e.g., alter or compress) your files, whereas Google Drive does.
From experience, for documents, Google Drive/Docs will create "GDocs" copies of some of your files, and duplicate them, then later delete and update them to new formats. All without the user's say-so.
The duplication comes from when they changed "labels" to "folders", thus forcing duplication of documents which you had tagged with multiple labels. That seriously pissed me off. The labelling was a brilliant idea and they should have left well enough alone.
For images and videos, Gdrive is unreliable in Picasa, because they compress your images/videos, and it's a one-way lossy compression, so you can't rely on Gdrive for uncorrupted backup of your photos OR videos.
So, from my perspective, Gdrive is unreliable - not so OneDrive.
However, I don't really have that much experience of OneDrive, except that it does a sterling job with my OneNote Notebooks and User Preferences syncing and MS Office document storage/backup (as one would expect), but I was unsure of the image/video storage aspects.
What I wanted was someone else to tell me about their greater experience.
I just found this by Glen Lipka:
(Copied below sans embedded hyperlinks/images.)
Google Drive vs. Microsoft OneDrive
2015-06-02
I have been using OneDrive for a while now as our cloud service. However, complaints have forced me to reconsider. Here is a quick summary of my thoughts on the subject.
Pricing
OneDrive pricing.
15 GB Free
100 GB $1.99/month
200 GB $3.99/month
1 TB $6.99/month (includes Office 365)
Google Drive Pricing.
15 GB Free
100 GB $1.99/month
1 TB $9.99/month (includes Google Apps)
They both offer office apps, but the full Microsoft Office suite is much more powerful and has both online and offline versions. With that said, Google is still 50% more expensive at the 1TB level.
Price Winner: Microsoft
___________________________________
Displaying Pictures/Videos
I have alot of photos online. I used to use Picassa, but it just didn’t the one feature I needed – folders! I organize my photos by year and then by month. Tags aren’t always good enough. I loved the Picasa photo editor, especially the red-eye removal, but without folders it just wasn’t going to work for me. Recently, Picasa has been merging into Google+. Actually, it’s pretty confusing what is happening there. I don’t use Google+, so I just don’t know what to think about their solution. With Picasa, YouTube, Google+ and Drive it is hard to understand what Google is doing. It feels like a lack of leadership/coordination to me.
On the other side, Microsoft does a great job of creating a nice interface for pictures. It has lightboxes and plenty of options. No red-eye removal, but the experience for viewers has been pretty good. My only complaint for Microsoft has been the lack of proper codecs to display DivX videos. It can display simpler formats, but I usually compress my videos using the DivX converter so they take up less space.
Display Winner: Microsoft
___________________________________
Sync Stability
If Microsoft had this part of the system under control, I would just give them the crown. It’s a better UI at a better price. However, the sync stability has been a nightmare. They are trying to embed this into the operating system, but honestly, they just fucked it up royally. Constant sync errors and confusing UI makes me worried about losing files constantly. The error icon is constant and the solution (re-open the file) is sketchy at best. Microsoft Office asks me the question, “Do you want to keep the server version or yours?”. This would be fine if they gave me a way to DIFF the two versions. How the hell should I know which is the right version?! They were supposed to be sync’d. No one else is editing!
You can see how Sync problems are by far the most infuriating issue. The importance of a stable sync can not be exaggerated. Google’s sync, seems to be much more elegant. The progress of the sync is much clearer. It also asks you if you mean to delete on both the server and local. (Microsoft is unclear when this happens). The speed seems ok so far. I have to test it more, but right now…
Winner: Google
___________________________________
Sharing and Identity Management
They basically have the same sharing model. However, Microsoft wants you to use their Microsoft account and Google wants you to use their Google account. (Duh!) So it comes down to which one of those accounts is more prevalent in people’s lives, especially me and my family. The answer is: We all use GMail. None of us use Microsoft. My phone is Google, my watch is Google.
Microsoft has tried numerous times to improve their email client, but ultimately, I keep having spam problems. Using GMail (and most recently Inbox) eliminates spam from my life. I’m not switching. Also, the Microsoft Phone is still DOA, so I am not buying that either.
Winner: Google
___________________________________
Summary – Split Decision!
So for now, I switched all of my normal files to Google Drive but left all of the photos and video at OneDrive. There are fewer sync problems with photos because I am not actively editing them. I will experiment with the photos at Google, but the extra storage expense is making me wary.
I hope this comparison helped you in some way. I’m just trying to educate, engage and entertain. Not always in that order.
___________________________________
--- End quote ---
In my case, OneDrive would seem to be:
* The winner on price. (From the costs given in the above.)
* The winner on display. (I learned that from the above.)
* The winner on sync. (From my experience, though syncing images/videos has yet to be tested by me.)
* The winner on Sharing and Identity Management. (Outlook being far superior in functionality and integration with Social Networking.)
* The winner on Data Integrity & Security. (QED).
Couple this with the Cavalier approach of Google in it unilateral killing-off of Google products, leaving the users with nothing else, then any Google user would probably be wise to reconsider whether their data was actually safe in Google's hands. The reverse would seem to be more clearly the case.
So, it looks like it's "Goodbye Google" from me to even more of their services, in addition to those they have already pulled.
wraith808:
I must say, in my limited use, it's never been onedrive vs. google drive. It's been both vs. Dropbox and Cubby. Dropbox for simple stuff and so much integrates with it, and Cubby for my heavy lifting, because I can turn any folder into a cubby. Onedrive and Google don't beat on either of these points. Though I have 1TB as part of my subscription to office, I don't use it for that reason.
Jibz:
As far as I am aware, OneDrive does not muck about with (e.g., alter or compress) your files, whereas Google Drive does.
From experience, for documents, Google Drive/Docs will create "GDocs" copies of some of your files, and duplicate them, then later delete and update them to new formats. All without the user's say-so.
-IainB (June 03, 2015, 11:11 AM)
--- End quote ---
Drive -> Settings -> Convert uploaded files to Google Docs format?
dr_andus:
IainB, I'd second wraith808 in that Google Drive and OneDrive are not like other cloud backup or file services (Dropbox etc.), because their focus is on drawing in the user into their ecosystem, and because of that there will be some limitations that you've pointed out. So, for backup services or plain vanilla file storage, transfer and syncing, more generic services (Dropbox etc.) will always be better.
However, once you're aware of those limitations, you can still get a lot of value out of Google Drive and OneDrive for the right kind of use, just don't try to use them for everything and don't put all your faith into them. E.g. I'm a Google Drive user but only for certain types of files, and whenever possible, I'd use the Google doc versions.
Couple this with the Cavalier approach of Google in it unilateral killing-off of Google products, leaving the users with nothing else, then any Google user would probably be wise to reconsider whether their data was actually safe in Google's hands.
-IainB (June 03, 2015, 11:11 AM)
--- End quote ---
That's not entirely fair. They always give you plenty of advance warning (6 months) and ways to export your data. Also, Google Drive is a lot more central to their ecosystem than the services they killed off so far.
Shutting down Google Drive would mean abandoning Chrome OS and crippling the Chrome browser project, Gmail etc., just when everything is moving towards the cloud. I'm not saying it's impossible but it sounds very unlikely and would be a catastrophic event, such as going bankrupt or being acquired by a hostile competitor.
I'd say MS is on more shaky grounds regarding their strategy than Google at the moment. How many times has MS re-launched their cloud service in recent years? In comparison, Google's cloud approach was a steady, incremental expansion.
Moreover, Google doesn't need to convince its users to become cloud users, as they already are. MS, on the other hand, has been having great difficulty convincing its users. The free OS upgrade is the last ditch effort to convert them en masse to the cloud, and in many ways is mimicking Google's Chrome OS strategy.
wraith808:
I'd say MS is on more shaky grounds regarding their strategy than Google at the moment. How many times has MS re-launched their cloud service in recent years? In comparison, Google's cloud approach was a steady, incremental expansion.
-dr_andus (June 03, 2015, 12:08 PM)
--- End quote ---
That was for beta reasons in one case and legal reasons in the other, not because of any sort of repositioning- therefore I don't think that's entirely fair.
It started out as Windows Live Folders in beta. When launched, they called it skydrive. Then because of (stupid) trademark ruling and the fact they didn't want to pay sky for nothing, it became onedrive.[1]
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