Re:Save more with Google Drive
by dragonwriter on Friday March 14, 2014 @02:12PM
(#7400716)
>Why can Dropbox deliver an Ubuntu Linux client, while Google and Microsoft feel that's an unjustified cost?
Because for Google and Microsoft, their services are cloud storage components of their strategic platforms, and support for other platforms is, where it exists at all (e.g., Drive's desktop sync application), a way to ease migration off of those platforms and into the vendor's strategic platform, whereas for Dropbox, the file storage is the strategic product.
Of course, that's why neither Google nor Microsoft need their storage products to make profit directly for them to be valuable.
> This is platform lock-in, pure and simple.
With Drive, which has an API on which third party can build sync apps for other platforms, I don't think its lock in. Its just a matter of prioritizing a tool whose business purpose is customer acquisition for the platforms where the most potential customers are.
Because for Google and Microsoft, their services are cloud storage components of their strategic platforms, and support for other platforms is, where it exists at all (e.g., Drive's desktop sync application), a way to ease migration off of those platforms and into the vendor's strategic platform, whereas for Dropbox, the file storage is the strategic product.
Of course, that's why neither Google nor Microsoft need their storage products to make profit directly for them to be valuable.
> This is platform lock-in, pure and simple.
With Drive, which has an API on which third party can build sync apps for other platforms, I don't think its lock in. Its just a matter of prioritizing a tool whose business purpose is customer acquisition for the platforms where the most potential customers are.