GOOGLE DRIVE REVIEW: Pros and Cons of using it. Features and Prices
TL;DR: Google Drive is a cloud storage well known for many people. It lets you store as many files as you want and you can access them from your computer or your mobile app. They provide this service to customers and businesses as well, at different prices.
But do you think your data is safe with Google? Do you know what they do with them? Didn’t you know that they play with your privacy? In this article we get more deep into it, if you care about your privacy keep reading if you want to know. Also we present you Internxt Drive, an alternative to Google Drive, a decentralized cloud storage that ensures privacy.
As is well known, Google Drive is a centralized file hosting service owned by Google. In 2012, they launched their service and after the name change from Google Docs, they have gained millions of users worldwide. This centralized cloud allows users to upload and share numerous files (such as photos, videos, pdfs, etc.), edit files on the computer and have them available in the cloud, access previous versions of the modifications, and use different work tools.
In addition, Google has unified the storage available to a user so that in the 15 GB offered for free, Gmail messages and photos from Google+ are also stored (Google + is free but in June they are going to start to charge for using it). Moreover, Google Drive is also available for laptops, either Mac or Windows and there is an application for desktop.
Google Drive features
This storage service has a large volume of subscribers and is one of the most widely used clouds on the internet. This is due in part to its easy usability. Google applications in general have a similar interface: lots of white space, selective use of colors and eye-catching graphics.
📄: The simplicity it presents is due to the keyword system that Google Drive uses for intuition, word search or content, as it applies Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to PDF files and images and searches the text contained in them like other documents.
🔎: Searching for files is easy thanks to the search bar located at the top of the page.
👁: The web can be viewed in different ways, you can use a thumbnail view or more conventional list view in the main web interface, and you can drag and drop files as you would with a normal desktop application.
🌐 Offline file access: this option is enabled for the web and also in the mobile app (for Android and iOS) and files can be accessed immediately and cached for offline use when needed.
🔰: For Windows and Mac, you can download a backup security tool, which allows you to have a reserve or backup version in order to recover them in case of their loss.
🔄 Synchronization: it also allows you to synchronize Google Drive locally and upload files from frequently used folders.
In regards to prices, there are different plans. By simply registering, users can get 15GB for free and there are also other paid plans offered by the ‘Google One’ plan. Also, for companies, there is G Suite, which incorporates other Google applications with some additional infrastructure and functions, ranging from 100 GB to 30 TB.
In essence, this centralized storage cloud is clearly popular and as they themselves claim, Google Drive uses artificial intelligence to process documents and shared resources but they don’t only use their technologies for that, Google has another back side.
The hidden side of Google Drive
Privacy:
Privacy is the big weakness of Google Drive (and Google in general). For years they have had hundreds of fines, prosecutions and lawsuits because of this aspect.
First of all, Google Drive does not comply with the European Data Protection Law (GDPR) since the files are stored outside Europe as required by law (European General Data Protection Regulation G.D.P.R. / EU Data Protection Directive 95/46/EC.). They also do not sign a data protection contract which is mandatory for the processing of data and files of third party users.
As for your files shared on Google Drive, you have to be careful when sharing them. For doing it, if you give permission to a user instead of using a shareable link, you are sharing your email address, which may include your real name or other personally identifiable information. The same goes for the first and last name you set in your account and the profile picture.
As for shared photos, photos contain metadata. This metadata may include information about the device used to produce the file or even GPS location.
Surveillance:
In Google Drive and the rest of its platforms, artificial intelligence is increasingly implemented. Have you ever been annoyed when Google asks you to click on photos of buses, traffic signs, or zebra crossings in its reCaptchas? Well, this way we help them to know us better because they track mouse movements, response times, typing, your location, etc., and they take advantage of it.
In addition, Google Drive has the possibility of verification and protection via facial recognition and fingerprints to have even more information about you.
Lack of transparency:
After so many cases that show that privacy is something that you are not going to have used their centralized cloud storage, Google has tried to justify all their actions and have even removed clauses from their code of conduct that protected users, but it is increasingly clear what they do.
In general, if you use any Google service, you generally assume that Google can see your files. Google Drive is no exception: For example, if you try to upload a file that appears to be malware or pirated content, it will be blocked and you won’t be able to upload it. That alone proves that they see what you upload.
Moreover, the other day reading on Twitter I saw this tweet from Anna Brees, a BBC reporter.
Since then I have been researching this company because I had never heard of it and have found some interesting things.
You deserve better
People deserve to live a private, secure and independent life online, and even more so now that everything is becoming more and more digitized. There is a better option, change your cloud storage.
Internxt Drive is a decentralized blockchain-based storage service. The cloud is easy to use and provides client-side encryption and stores client files on multiple nodes on the network so that a server never has a complete file, but a fragment of the encrypted data. It is also zero-knowledge, meaning that documents are fully encrypted so that they cannot be accessed and do not have the decryption keys to the files.
Unlike Google Drive, Internxt Drive is a decentralized cloud that provides security through compartmentalization. In such platforms, files are typically divided into evenly sized data segments and each segment or block has its own address, but there is no metadata to provide full context about what it is. In centralized systems, if the cloud controller is hacked, the storage as a whole should be considered compromised as well. Decentralized computing design presents very little risk of network hacks.
All in all, because of its decentralized nature and privacy, Internxt Drive is a good choice for storing your files on the network, especially if you value security.
