Google Drive VS. Dropbox - In Depth review

A few days ago, Google Drive was released. I use a lot cloud sync systems since quite some time ago. I use to work between more than one computer, then at the office... also sending some “big” files, HD Video, big images and so on (I’m a designer). I tried several of these services, and finally stayed for a long time using Dropbox. Why? Is what most people says if you do some little research on the internet: it just works!

 

Then Google Drive arrived, pricing is quite interesting, so I decided to give it a try, and now I’m going to share my opinion with you (I kind of like this cloud thing, it makes my life and work easier, so I also like to share opinions and possible uses to these services :), probably it will be useful to someone that is thinking about trying it too. I’m going to share what I liked, what I don’t liked that much, and what I found missing. Of course, this depends directly on the type of use you give to the service, so I’ll start talking about what I use Cloud Syncing for, and you can better understand my opinion.

 

How I use the cloud and syncing? (you may skip this part and go directly to the review):

I mainly use Dropbox (I’ve tried several services, like SugarSync or Ubuntu One) to sync files between my computers. At home I have my desktop computer, in which I work, and my laptop, to do simple things, documents, or if I need to take it to go somewhere. Then I use a different computer from the office. I like to have some of my files accessible from every of them, for example: my music library. I like to have a single music library, so independently of the computer from which I add a new song, I automatically have in the rest of them.

 

I also use to share files with my coworkers, sometimes big files. As I work on some projects directly into my Dropbox folder, I have them automatically available to send to anyone. With some people I also have shared folders if we’re working in the same project.

 

Then it’s the mobile app. I use it a lot, again with the music library, I like to add a song to my music folder, go to my Android phone, and pick that song so it’s available offline. That way, no matter where I am, I’m able to download (if it’s not already downloaded) and listen any of my songs.

 

Finally, I have some big files that sometimes I need access to, stored online, but not synced in my computers, so I don’t need that extra gigabites in my computer. This way, I have access to them from everywhere, or I can share them with someone without more troubles.

 

So now you know the use I give to the cloud service, let’s get into this review.

 

 

In my opinion, there are some main points to have in mind when deciding which cloud sync service to use: web, client, mobile app, sharing system, sync reliability, pricing, storage space and speed.

 

Probably there are much more than this points, things like privacy and all that stuff, but here I’ll focus on those.

 

 

Once we decide to try a cloud service, we start on its web, before downloading the client and all that. From the web, we can manage all our files and folders, upload new things, share folders or files, setup our account...

 

I think both webs (Google Drive and Dropbox) are quite good. They are pretty simple and intuitive. Google Drive has probably some more options, as it’s full of compatibility with Google Docs and more stuff, but I find easier the Dropbox one, and probably more attractive to the eyes. I think that you need to get used to Google Drive’s options. Almost everything is accessible through right mouse button over a file, or selecting a file and pressing the “More” button. In dropbox, you also have the right mouse button menu, but you have too some buttons with the basic functions that you need, so almost everything you can do is in front of you at a first sight. Very easy and intuitive.

 

In the other hand, when you have tons of files, a search system always comes handy. Google Drive’s one seems much more efficient, with very accessible filters to restrict the search and find what you’re looking for faster. Also, you can favourite some important or frequent files so you always have them a click away from home.

 

Google Drive has a very nice Grid view (Edit: Tonight I received an email from Dropbox, they added also a grid view for photos, but for now only in the Camera Upload folder, we’ll talk about this later on), quite useful for image galleries . It has a powerful video preview youtube-like, even with the quality selector (useful to preview full HD videos from a little internet connection). Also, it’s integration with Google Docs allows you to preview a lot of documents formats, including .pdfs and even the content from .rar files! But it hasn’t an image gallery, useful when you need to go through lots of images at full size. This is something that Dropbox does quite good. Dropbox has an image gallery, and as far as I know, you can even share a photo gallery with your friends. But it lacks al the documents preview that we mentioned about Google Drive.

 

In both webs is very easy to upload files, and they even allow you to upload files dragging them from your desktop over the web, which makes uploading things pretty fast, if needed (if you use the client, you probably don’t use uploading from the web a lot of times, as you’ll upload files from the folder in your computer). Then, about the folder navigation... Probably Google Drive wins again, as it provides an useful tree view with all the folders. Instead, in dropbox, you need to go home and start navigating step by step into folders.

 

They offer the possibility of multiselection (select more than one item at a time). It’s possible to make a multiple selection by pressing Ctrl or Shift while clicking on items. Google Drive also has a checkbox to mark as selected easily. Also, dragging and dropping items into folders is allowed, and very useful, but Google Drive is probably more efficient, as we can drag items out of the current folder, right into the tree view, while in dropbox you can only drag them to other folders into the same window, or into Dropbox home.

 

A feature that may make a difference in the near future is that Google Drive, allows external apps to work with it, opening new ways of working, like being able to share in realtime, something that you’re doing in an external app with a friend through Google Drive. Interesting!

 

Both allow access to old revissions of the files, which makes recovering files available. This feature may be very handy for some users.

 

Conclussion: Dropbox is probably easier and more appealing, while Google Drive has more options and functionality. Anyway, if you use these services mostly to sync from your computer, both will do the job perfectly.

 

 

The client is the software that you install in your computer to get the files synced locally with the cloud. In a first instance, both Dropbox and Google Drive clients look pretty similar.

 

They install a folder in your computer, and everything you have inside it gets synced with the cloud. Easy enough until this point.

 

When you install them, or after at any time from preferences, you have access to the Selective Folder Sync, which allows you to pick the folders that you want to sync in that given device. This is really interesting, cause it makes it possible to have some folders existing only online, or to have only work related folders at work, while at home you can have everything synced.

 

Here Dropbox has advantage, as it allows you to selectively sync even subfolders, while in Google Drive you can only pick folders that are directly into your Drive (not subfolders).

 

Into the Dropbox or Google Drive folders, files are shown with a badge that helps us identify their status (syncing, updated and so on). I need to say that I found that sometimes, Google Drive shows incorrect badges about file status.

 

Both show an icon in the notifications bar, that tells us when everything is up to date, or when it’s syncing something. If you go to that icon, you can get info about how is the uploading (Dropbox provides more complete info here), how many storage space from your account you’re using, access to the web, open the local folder, preferences... Even they are very similar, I find the options from Dropbox more useful, including the one that quickly shows you the latest updated files.

 

In the preferences, Google drive has only a few options, while in Dropbox we have a little more functionallity, like the possibility to limit for uploading/downloading.

 

Note that I’ve only tested this mostly in windows, so other platforms may vary. (I also use Dropbox with Ubuntu in my laptop, and for what I’ve seen, it’s almost the same).

In the supported platforms, Dropbox has covered more than Google Drive, which we can understand, as Google Drive has just been launched. Dropbox covers different mobile platforms, along with Windows, Mac & Linux, while Google Drive, for now has only Windows, Mac and Android clients.

 

Conclussion: Dropbox has some more options, and covers more platforms, even Google Drive has plans to cover more platforms (they announced iOS version, and it’s almost sure that a Linux client will also come), but for now, Dropbox is the clear winner this time.

 

 

Google Drive is still starting in the market, so for now I can only compare Android versions, as iOS are still coming soon, and no more platforms are announced yet.

 

Android apps for Dropbox and Google Drive, have also similar features. From them you can access all your files online, but none of them are actually in your phone, so it’s nice as phones memory is more limited than in a computer. Anyway, you’re able to set the desired files to be downloaded, so they are updated and you can have access to them offline. 

 

But I found several drawbacks in the Android app for Google Drive. One of them: it’s a bit unstable, the first time I tried to play with it, it crashed twice. It doesn’t run always as smooth as the Dropbox Android app, and the more unuseful thing for me, is that when you set a file to be accessible offline, instead of replicating the folder structure of the web, it creates random folders with ramdom names, which makes almost impossible to navigate through that folders to find the file that you want. In my case, as I said at the beginning, I use this for having my songs in the phone: with Dropbox is easy to find the songs that I’m looking for, as it has the proper folders and structure, just as I have them on the web or in my computers, but with Google Drive, for now it’s almost impossible.

 

Dropbox features a system that works very well, which automatically uploads the photos you take with your phone to Dropbox (you can set this to do it only on wi-fi connection, and not to do it when battery is low), so when you arrive home, your Dropbox automatically has your photos waiting for you in your computer (or in the web). Google for now do this using what they call “Instant Upload” with Google+, through picasa, but they’re only stored online, not syncing with your computer. Probably in the future they mix those systems to work together with Google Drive.

 

And again, Google Drive has a nice plus, which is that with the Google Docs functionality, you can watch and edit documents directly from your phone.

 

Apart from all this, you can also share files and folders and some more things from the mobile app. Something that I miss from both services is the ability to set a whole folder to be locally updated in your phone, but seems not possible for now.

 

Conclussion: Here they do almost the same, Google Drive has the Google Docs integration extra, but it’s lacking some maturity yet, while Dropbox just works flawlessly. Also, again, as in the Desktop OS clients, Dropbox supports more platforms, while Google Drive for now is only available for Android.

 

 

This is something very useful when we talk about cloud services. There are mainly two ways in which usually you can share things with people: working together with the same synced files, or being able to send a link to a download so your contact can get the file. Both Google Drive and Dropbox have a lot sharing options, let’s take a look at them.

 

Syncing files with your contacts is very useful: you can put files into a folder, and the rest of the people who have that folder shared with them, will have that files also, synced as you upload them. This is very useful when it’s about collaboration. Let’s say you’re working with other person in the same project: you can both have access to the same folder, with the same files, at the same time... in different computers :)

 

Dropbox allows you to share folders with other people. It works perfectly, but it’s a bit limited, as you need to have that folder in your Dropbox Home, which usually is not how we’re used to organize projects. Another limit, is that even you own a folder, if you share it with someone, that person will need to have storage space enough to take it, causing situations in which someone uploads a big file into a shared folder, and if you have less available space than that person, you will run out of space, not being able to sync anymore, until you get something out of your Dropbox. Anyway, it works nice.

 

Google Drive has way more functionallity here. I need to say again that it’s based on Google Docs, so sharing options are more impressive: When someone shares a folder with you, you just get that folder into a special section which is called “Shared with me”. You only have access to them from the web, and you can download files to your computer, but they don’t count against your storage space until you drag them to “My Drive”. This means that as long as you don’t have “your” copy of that folder, you have access to it, but it’s stored only into the folder owner’s account.

 

Also, when you share a folder or a file, you can decide the priviledges that the people with which you’re sharing it will have. You can share a folder with a group of people, but you can decide if they can view only, but not modify the content of that folder, or even set them so only specific persons are able to modify the contents, but the rest of them will only watch.

 

With documents, Google Docs functionality is still there, allowing to create documents collaborating in real time with your contacts, which is really cool and useful.

 

In the other hand, about sending links so your contacts can download a file, I find Dropbox more comfortable. They even added a few days ago (they added it officially; it was possible to activate that feature before) an option that let’s you get a link for every file in your Dropbox. Until this feature, you could only send links from files into a folder called “Public” inside your Dropbox Folder. Now you can even get the link to the file with a right mouse click in your computer, and it will lead you to the download page (to get a direct link you can right click the Download button and get the address, so your contacts won’t have to go through the Dropbox web to get the file).

 

With Google Drive is also possible to do this, but only from the web, and it needs a few more clicks than in Dropbox. First you need to set the privacy of the file to “Public”, or “Anyone with the link”, and then go and take the link. Once you have that link, it will lead your contacts to a Google Docs page with the file, or contents of the folder, whatever - to download it, they need to go to a menu, and click Download. To get a Direct link... is a bit more difficult than with Dropbox, you need to “create” it manually (as far as I know). I’ll paste here a little text I wrote to remember how to do it:

 

1. Take the link, sharing it with “Anyone with the link”:

docs.google.com/open?id=*******************

 

2. Pick this part of the link: “open”

docs.google.com/open?id=*******************

 

3. Replace it by “uc”:

docs.google.com/uc?id=********************

 

As you can see, even if it’s easy enough... it’s not confortable if you need to do this a few times in a row with different files.

 

Conclussion: Google Drive is more powerful sharing in the web, and has much more options and functionalities, including real time sharing and collaborating in documents, thanks to Google Docs integration. When it comes to generate links to files, so you can let your contacts download it, even both services can do it, Dropbox allows you to do it faster and easier.

 

 

If you’re going to use a cloud sync service, you need to know if it’s reliable, and know if it can mess your files or whatever. Reliability is very important to me, as I use to sync project’s files, so I need to be sure that when I go to another computer, my file will be there.

 

What to say about Dropbox in this aspect... if you just take a second to look in the internet, you’ll always see the same about Dropbox: It just works. I used it for years, and only once I got a conflict. A conflict is when Dropbox has two possible recent versions for a file, and it doesn’t know which one is the good one. This can happen when two people have the same file opened, and save it in different computers with different changes. To me, this happened once, I left a file opened in my laptop, and then I edited it in my desktop... what was the result? In the folder, I had two files, and one of them was renamed. I checked both of them and deleted the one that I didn’t want. That’s all.

 

In Google Drive... I found this quite annoying. With a basic use it works fine, but when you use it intensively, problems appear. Files that doesn’t sync at all, without any kind of explanation, they just fail it’s upload for “unknown errors”. This happened with basic files, such as images. Also, I got lots of conflicts while working on files directly into the Google Drive Folder. 

 

For example, I was working in a photoshop file, pretty big, just to try Google Drive’s behavior. I saved it, and before it was completely synced I saved again. Result? Conflict. I made it several times in a row getting different results: The file couldn’t be synced, the file dissapeared from my folder, I hadn’t permission to overwrite the file from photoshop... but in the web, I had 3 or 4 copies of the same file, with the same exact name, so when I deleted one of them, all the copies went to the bin also. From the Windows Client I got a message with files that couldn’t get synced. When I clicked it, it shown me a window with a list of the unsynced files, and two options: retry, and close. Retry would give the same error again and again. No way to solve it manually, other than deleting files from the web, and replacing them on the folder: not an optimized workflow when you’re at work... with something that should work out of the box without your supervision. After all, it’s what it’s supposed to do!

 

Conclussion: Google Drive works good almost all the time, if you’re an average user, and you just place stuff on it’s folder, to have access to it from everywhere. If you’re using it with serious stuff, projects, and things that you need to be sure that have been synced without you checking it all the time... Google Drive it’s not a choice for now. Dropbox here works just fine, without problems, and in case of conflict, you’ll get the two versions of the file everywhere, and not being unsynced or whatever.

 

 

Not much to say here. I’ve joined this categories as they are similar or depend on each other (not the speed of the service).

 

On the sync speed part, as far as I can say, they work pretty similar. Dropbox sometimes feels a bit faster on the upload (don’t know much about technical details, but I think Drobox uses what is called Delta Sync, which only uploads changes, and not the whole file after a modification, which is much more efficient and fast. Not sure if Google Drive uses this system at all), while with Google Drive, downloading a file from the web was sometimes a lot faster.

 

About storage and pricing, in both services you start with a given ammount of GBs for free, and if you want more, some fees apply in a monthly basis. In general, Google Drive is a lot cheaper than Dropbox, provides more storage/price options and at least at naked eye allows bigger storage space, probably useful for companies and so (up to 16 Terabites), while Dropbox stops at 100 GBs, and then you can contact them to contract more than 1 Terabite.

 

Here is a quick description about Services and Pricing:

 

Dropbox:

Free Account: Starting with 2GBs, but you can increase them up to 16GBs by bringing people to register and use Dropbox.

Pro 50: Adds 50 GBs to your free storage - $9.99/month or 99.00$/year (Also, for each referral, you’ll get 1GB to add up to 32GBs to your storage space).

Pro 100: Adds 100 GBs to your free storage - $19.99/month or &199.00/year (Also, for each referral, you’ll get 1GB to add up to 32GBs to your storage space).

Teams: Starting from 1TB - $795 for 5 Users.

 

Google Drive:

Free Account: 5GBs

25 GB: Adds 25 GBs to your free storage - $2.49/month

100 GB: Adds 100 GBs to your free storage - $4.99/month

200 GB: Adds 200 GBs to your free storage - $9.99/month

400 GB: Adds 200 GBs to your free storage - $19.99/month

1 TB: Adds 1 TB to your free storage - $49.99/month

2 TBs: Adds 2 TBs to your free storage - $99.99/month

4 TBs: Adds 4 TBs to your free storage - $199.99/month

8 TBs: Adds TBs to your free storage - $399.99/month

16 TBs: Adds 8 TBs to your free storage - $799.99/month

*Also, if you had buy Google Docs storage previously (like that old 20 GBs for $5/year), you’ll keep that pricing and that storage (even that pricing is not available anymore), which is cool if you already had it :)

 

Conclussion: Google Drive is a lot cheaper and allows more storage/pricing options. Dropbox gives you the ability to earn more free space by referring your friends to use the service... For me, Google Drive wins this assault clearly.

 

 

Google Drive is way cheaper, with more storage plans, has powerful sharing options and more functionality, thanks to it’s integration with all the Google products and Google Docs, which makes it a great option if you have a Gmail or GoogleApps account. It looks like a very promissing cloud syncing service in the future, but it needs to grow and become more mature, appart from supporting more platforms.

 

In the other hand, Dropbox works perfectly and it’s more reliable. If you’re a bit of a hardcore user or use it for work, you probably prefer to pay more, to make sure that everything works as expected. It covers most of the functionalities needed to share files and folders, it’s well designed, it’s mobile apps work fine, and for now it supports more platforms than Google Drive.

 

 

I hope you found this article useful. Personally, I like a lot Google Drive and I’m already using it. But for serious stuff and also beacause I use Linux in my Laptop, I’ll stick using Dropbox for some time, while Google Drive gets more stable and reliable. See you!