Hackers stole 187 million personal identities last year, with the average yield per data breach amounting to 1.1 million identities, Symantec said. Identity theft gleaned from lost or stolen PCs or mobile devices also exposed 18.5 million identities in 2011. And malicious attacks increased by 81 percent in comparison with Symantec’s 2010 estimates.
The Next Web was lucky enough to get a heads up on what’s expected, and based on the details, it seems like competitors may be given a run for their money.
The site which is expected to launch at http://drive.google.com will offer users a free online storage service with 5GB of space, with the option to upgrade at a small cost. There are no details yet about referral upgrades though. Dropbox users on the other hand start off at 2GB and also have to pay to upgrade. Their referral program however allows users to upgrade up to 16GB for free, and HTC users even get a special free 23GB upgrade for 2 years.
Until Google details their referral scheme, it’s hard to make judgement just yet, but starting with 5GB is definitely a big incentive for many over Dropbox. As a Dropbox user, I’ve found it hard to get referrals because of the fact that so many of my friends already have an account with them. There are some clever ways to upgrade, but most can’t be bothered.
Google Drive will first debut on the PC, Mac, Android, and iOS systems. This alone was a good decision because they target a huge demographic of users. While Dropbox is also available on a few other Platforms such as Blackberry and Linux, Google Drive will still be available for most of the masses.
One of Google’s most prized services is Google Docs. It has revolutionized the way people share office/school/home documents over the web. There are rumours that Google Drive will also feature some type of real-time document editing service similar to that or even integrated into Google Docs. This alone could be a huge draw for many. Dropbox does offer real time syncing, but editing it means users have to completely sync a file before others can edit it, and edits can only be made by one users at a time per sync (for management’s sake).
While Google has had its share of failed services such as Wave and Plus, Drive sounds like an extremely competitive service when compared to Dropbox, and we can’t wait to try it out.
There are other services like iCloud, Box.net, and SkyDrive, which offer similar services but still lack in various areas such as bandwidth limits and lack of real time syncing.
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