I think GP is referring to the Gnome Virtual File System (GVfs) [1], which has a number of pluggable backends, one of which being Google Drive. I've used it lightly and it seemed to "just work."
Re:Show HN: Google Drive as a file system
by federicoponzi on Sunday July 01, 2018 @01:45PM
(#17436580)
Yeah probably he was talking about that. But for my Mate, GVfs is not an option :(
One crucial difference is the fact that Backup and Sync picks up local files (which exist physically on the user's machine) and uploads them to a special Drive directory in the background. GCSF does not store anything locally unless you tell it to. It simply creates a virtual directory and reports its content and file tree structure so that it matches whatever exists on Drive.