Google Drive Is One Cloud Too Many

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Reading today about Google’s plans to finally launch Drive, a cloud-based file storage service, encouraged some ironic blue-sky thinking. Microsoft’s got SkyDrive, Apple devices get iCloud and there’s the ever-ubiquitous Dropbox, which has more than 50 million users across the world and has recently been invested in by Bono and The Edge, the two most annoying men in rock and roll. Discussions on Twitter point to Google Drive integrating with the huge number of cloud-based services the Silicon Valley giant already gives to users for free, which begs the question - why bother?

The variety of services Google already provides is staggering to the point of being overwhelming. Users can collaborate live on Word documents and spreadsheets using Google Docs and, if still on Google+, can even have their phone automatically upload all of their photos to the service for safe-keeping. Google Music, when/if it’s launched in the UK, will allow users to stash 20,000 tracks in the cloud for streaming on mobile phones. And then there’s Picasa Web Albums, Gmail, Google Calendar…the list goes on. Google’s cloud services are a menagerie of tools with great purposes in mind when they act independently. Trying to integrate them all into this other cloud service is a headache waiting to happen.

And even if the service does launch successfully with decent integration, how many people will make the leap? Spotify Premium allows for any and all music tracks on the service to be stored offline on phones and music players, rather than just those that the user owns, and Dropbox is compatible with every single device under the sun and now offers automatic phone and digital camera backup - and these can all be shared with a link requiring no registration.

When it comes to using Google services, my actual use of them varies. Gmail is an obvious candidate for regular use because it’s genuinely useful - the same goes for Google Docs and Google Calendar. But for cloud file access and backup without batting an eyelid, I use Dropbox. The desktop integration means that sharing files on a regular basis is drag-and-drop simple, and I can take a photo on my phone and have it sitting on my hard drive moments later. 

I do also use iCloud, simply because it’s there and it’s very well-integrated with both my laptop and my iPad. It’s a comfort to know that photos and other things are saved, more than anything, and being able to write something in the pure and focused iA Writer and see it appear on my laptop for formatting is hugely convenient. But cloud apps on my phone, like Google Docs and the like, generally go unused, and two-step verification to keep my Google account secure makes every log-in on a new computer a pain. 

In short, Google Drive’s problem is penetrating the barrier of usability and necessity. With so many distinct ”cloud-plus” services (collaborative emails and shared calendars) already available, what use is an extra storage space when there are companies doing it better? For ease-of-use and practicality, Google has their work cut out when Drive launches, and I won’t find myself using it too often when there’s so many other services out there doing it better or with a better sense of purpose.

Failure To Launch: Google+, Believe It Or Not, Still Exists Out There Somewhere

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In embarking on the huge social media campaign Lou and I created for my entry into Insert Coin’s Master Assassin contest - quick update: we won - we did our best to cover all the bases as best we could. This meant Facebook and Twitter received a daily assault which, amazingly, resulted in zero lost friends or followers, and by and large a combination of posting, tweeting and messaging ensured that I was able to inch the victory by a handful of likes against my nearest competitor. 

That said, there was one social network I did try and use outside of the Big Two in order to achieve victory - it’s one that people spend 3 minutes on per month on average these days, compared to 405 minutes on Facebook, and has been called a “virtual ghost town” by the Wall Street Journal. Google+, with a network of 90 million people to its name, did precisely nothing to help me win the contest and if it weren’t for the genuinely useful services Google provides I’d shut my whole damn account down for the sake of virtual spring cleaning.

Launched in the middle of last year and opened to the public in September, Google+ was touted as a lot of things by bloggers and professional media outlets alike. CNET called it “a new social network that actually works” (Rafe Needleman, CNET), praising the Facebook/Twitter hybrid that the service could be. Users would create “circles” of users, such as workmates, friends and acquaintances, and could choose exactly who could see each post made down to exact people, allowing everything from public sharing of videos to friends-only event plans or direct, private messaging with one or two people. Mobile apps allowed automatic uploading of photos taken on phones to the service for sharing later on, effectively turning Google’s huge server space into a photo backup service. There were a lot of great ideas and with millions of Google accounts already using Gmail, Google Calendar, Docs and other products there was a huge userbase ready to send the service into orbit.

The problem was, after teething problems with collaborative service Wave, Google just didn’t know how to handle the service very well. Social networking has never been the Silicon Valley giant’s forte - Orkut never became big outside of Brazil, and who remembers Friend Connect? - and G+ suffered a similar fate as interest waned in the weeks after its public release. The BBC’s Rory Cellan-Jones wondered if he could be lured away from Facebook and Twitter who were, it must be said, doing a damn good job of providing all the social networking tools he needed before G+ even came along. The idea of maintaining Circles and constantly swapping people between them became too much for a lot of people - myself included - and that Facebook began operating a similar, more automated scheme of workmates, local friends and acquaintances shortly after speaks volumes about the service’s good ideas but ultimate failure to penetrate the public consciousness for more than a few months - something not even Angry Birds could prevent when it hit the site six weeks after its public launch.

The real problem with Google+ was that, for all of its fantastic features and great ideas, it didn’t account for one thing in particular: the fact that a lot of services were doing similar things in a similar way - but those services have a deeper-set userbase who, at the time, didn’t really feel like upping sticks and moving all their thoughts to a new social media domain. I still see a few people using the service to share things on a platform with less of a blink-and-you-miss it quality than the Big Two, but what I see on Google+ in a day I’ll catch on the Others in the space of ten minutes. The Google+ Hangout feature - multi-cam video and text conferences free-of-charge, a major up-yours to the folks at Skype - is great if you ever need to reach a lot of people in a more meaningful way than IM, but it’s a genius idea without the wheels it needs to keep it moving forward. 

Save for some great thinking, there isn’t enough to keep me on Google+, and the proof is in the pudding: my pleas on Twitter tonight found themselves an audience of hundreds in the space of a few minutes, and the same applies to my posts on Facebook; on Google+, I received just one +1 (a Facebook like, essentially) for my efforts. Better luck next time Google - or better yet, stick to the emailing, calendars, word processing suites and everything else you do best.

If you really want to, you can add me to your Google+ circles. But don’t. You won’t see anything on there until they eventually shut it down, and even then it’ll just be a link to this blog.

The Fear of constant connectivity

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I’ve been having real trouble with switching off lately. Between working the weekend job, honouring articles and preparing editorials, I’ve been seeing Lou and doing all manner of other things - and the whole time, I’m refreshing Twitter and Facebook in the same manner as a monkey at a typewriter. On speed.

Tonight, I made it a mission to turn off completely, and in doing so I had a stark realisation - I can’t stand being connected to the internet all the time.

It’s just after a quarter past eleven as I write this, and my head is woozy from a long day and what is probably the onset a migraine unassisted by a mixture of painkillers and bladder-busting amounts of water. In the background, Facebook scrolls past, my phone buzzes every two minutes with a new email and Tweetdeck, on occasion, pops up in the top right corner of my vision to let me know somebody has sent me a message regarding something or other that is, for the next thirty seconds, of nothing but The Utmost Importance.

The distractions are doing nothing to help me write, nor are they doing anything for my headache. The problem is that, in my head, I’m convinced I have this all up in my face on a Need To Know basis. I have to know that people are as passive-aggressive as ever on Facebook, and that somebody’s telling a funny joke about how “Inglorious Basterds” is an ironic movie title because of the term ‘grammar Nazi’. Every email that comes in, no matter how high they pile, has to alert me of its arrival. And it’s driving me absolutely fucking ballistic.

Without a doubt, I’m an addict. That I know. And kicking the good stuff - this constant, endless feed of mostly useless information I’m convinced I have to know - is a tricky business. I’ve not “gone quiet” in weeks. Months, even. So earlier tonight I set myself the task of going quiet, and just playing a game, without turning on the laptop or looking at my phone, which was turned off as well so I wouldn’t get any ideas.

The experience was, truth be told, bizarre. The first ten minutes of going quiet - for someone at my level of constant refreshing - is eerie. You wonder if anyone’s said anything funny, or if there’s anything worthy of a Like, that classic statement of apathetic agreement, on your Facebook news feed. You’re terrified at your inbox count climbing and climbing, reaching uncontrollable levels. It’s akin to a bad trip, paranoia and the Fear dancing around inside your head, teasing you for being Out of the Know.

The twenty minutes after make up the twitchiest stage of withdrawl. My eyes danced over the surface of my laptop over and over, thinking, wondering, pondering. There’s an immediate reaction sometimes to just grab my phone, try and turn the screen on, then remind myself that it’s off and will not be on for quite some time. This happens countless times, over and over.

Any time thereafter becomes a little calmer, a little less worried, and better-collected. The ability to focus on a different task with more intense concentration becomes easier, and I was able to keep busy for an hour or so at best before the thinking began again - I’d been so good at not checking anything, I probably deserved to look at something now, right?

That’s when the real shivers hit me, and I realised how bloody miserable I am constantly being connected to everything. I couldn’t really care for everyone’s endlessly whiny bitchfests on Facebook, nor am I really that fussed about missing out on a pun or two on Twitter - my life won’t be any richer having not been aware of them in the first place. The incessant buzzing of messages can drive a man insane. Emails can wait for a focused and productive session of sifting through them later on. Anything genuinely worth seeking out will tend to do the rounds for a while, and if I need to see it then one way or another I probably will.

But the paranoia - and there is no other word for it - that comes with being constantly wired into everything is soul-sucking and horrible. For someone in my field it could be considered a necessity to always be afloat of the latest news and happenings, but there are times when it’s necessary to take a step back, reconsider what it is you’re doing with your time and start breaking it down into work and play. And if Twitter and Facebook are starting to feel like work? Maybe I’ve been on them so long each and every day that they’re turning into chores.

For more on this, read Patrick Garratt’s excellent post on Twitter addiction at HuffPost.