Google got its start by walking into an existing (and frankly much more mature) market for search and competing with the existing players "without reason". Likewise advertising was pretty well served before they showed up. And I'm pretty sure email predates their dominant platform there, too. I'm not sure what's "Microsoftian" about this in particular, but it's certainly "Googly".

Honestly, this (and a lot of the other posts here) sounds more like sports cheering to me than analysis. Dropbox is part of the "YC team", so their competitors are the bad guys?

> Honestly, this (and a lot of the other posts here) sounds more like sports cheering to me than analysis. Dropbox is part of the "YC team", so their competitors are the bad guys?

Holy crap. I finally understand why Hacker News users hate Google.

I neither own Dropbox stock nor know anyone employed by them, so the poisoning the well wasn't necessary.

I'm talking strictly about Google. It's not 2004, Google is sitting at enough poker tables right now, they don't need to join another unless there is a very good reason to do so (a hole in their ecosystem, for one).

I have no financial stake in the New England Patriots, nor do I know anyone employed by them. I still hate Peyton Manning (OK, poor analogy this season, but still).

The final sentence seems ridiculous on its face. Read simply, it sounds like you think Google shouldn't be doing product development at all. There's a word for tech companies that stop "joining new tables": "stagnant".

GMail competes but isn't dominant yet - latest numbers of total registered user puts it on par with both Yahoo and Hotmail at ~350 million users.

I can see it at an easy and almost transparent way to send large files by mail (in Gmail).

We are in 2012 and it still sucks to send large files. There was a relevant xkcd about it not long ago.

This is a missing feature of Google Apps. The microsoft model is shared network drives that support any file type plus office. Google Apps can't currently compete with the shared network drive because it is limited to only documents.

This is exactly what I'm complaining about. How vague is that? What is the specific problem here that people are having with Google Apps and how will yet-another virtual drive fix it for the customers. Specifics please.

Actually this is why I'll likely use GDrive and it's one of the few things that leads to frustation for me with Dropbox.

I use Dropbox for two reasons: backup and sharing. Almost everything I have in Dropbox is documents. I mostly use Google Apps for my document editing needs but I sometimes use Office b/c I prefer Excel for complicated spreadsheets. I also use Word when the folks I'm sharing with aren't hip to Google Apps and/or I need to do a level of formatting that Google Apps doesn't support. I prefer Google Apps to Office because the collab is so good.

Because I use both Office (files) and Google Apps it means that my docs live in two places. Dropbox (my local hard drive) and Google Apps. That drives me crazy. Where does that doc live again? Why doesn't it show up in Spotlight searches? I want them in one place. I could manually import/export but I'm lazy and can't be bothered.

Also GDrive could make for a great leaver to get "normal people" that use Office to start using Google Apps.

Object storage for end users; still a huge problem to solve, considering Google's missions statement is to organize the world's information.

It probably helps solve the data barf problem on SD cards where every application is responsible for managing its own user data. Also, depending on the ToS, they can probably peek inside your files to gather more information about you.

You know the ToS, it is the new unified simplified privacy policy that says everything you ever touch is part of your advertising profile.