Let the Cloud wars begin!: Dropbox, Skydrive, Google Drive

[rockymtnhigh]

The challenge today is we live more and more in a "cloud"-based world, but real discussions about privacy rights just are not happening, and the law is 20 years out of date.

I started looking at encryption tools to take parts of my DB setup and encrypt it -- and it completely eliminates the "ease of use" that was provided by the very notion of dropbox.

And when I think about the grip that Google has on me -- the power it has from 8 years of housing ALL of my meaningful emails, several GB worth, and the difficulties of abandoning ship (just to think of all the sites I am registered with using gmail is mind boggling, including this site itself!) are over-whelming. And even if I were to abandon ship, what is my alternative? Host my own email on my Virtual Server through Jumpline.com? (I could, but not really appealing) My iCloud account? Eh... i might be a fan of Apple products today, but I don't know that I want them having my ENTIRE life any more than Google did. In the end, maybe its ok to keep a gmail, have a work account, and do calendering/tasks/photos/music through iCloud.

 

[Teehar]

Got an email from google today and just activated google drive.Not as good as skydrive as far as storage but I still figure its good for pics.Can't ever have enough backups

And yea google privacy policies suck!As others stated if its something you want to keep private then don't put it in the cloud.

Slightly off topic...

I recommend gmx for another email provider.Have had an account with them for well over a year and haven't had one spam.Plus its pretty nice to only type a few letters @gmx.com

 

[KE4EST]

Yeah got my email from Google also and have my drive set-up, but won't be putting anything on there and is real private.

 

[Ramy]

I had google docs downloaded, but they still don't have my drive setup yet.

 

[rockymtnhigh]

This feature is not brand-new, but points out one of the ways you can get up to another 3GB of free space from Dropbox.

http://lifehacker.com/5905673/dropb...photo-uploading-and-up-to-3-gb-of-free-space?

I have not been doing that as of yet, but am thinking one of the uses I will have for either Drive or Skydrive will be for photo backup, as a supplement to my external hard drive solutions. Alas, my iPhoto library is already massive.

 

[Ramy]

I had google docs downloaded, but they still don't have my drive setup yet.

Well, just got an email saying my drive is ready so that didn't take long.

 

[Stargazer]

My drive on google is ready for me too. Looks like they are finally unlocking it for some to use.

 

[rockymtnhigh]

An in-depth review of options:

Dropbox, SkyDrive, Google Drive: which one is right for you? | ZDNet

 

[truckracer]

All these wonderful "cloud services" is just corporations spying on you.....what a treat.