[START OF VIDEO] Steve Dotto here.
Iím glad you're joining us today.
Today, we are taking on a challenging topic ñ which one is better, Google Drive or Dropbox?
This is going to be a challenge and I know some people are going to be mad at me.
Oh well, Iíll take that.
Iíve been using Dropbox for a long time and I was using Google Docs for a long time.
Iíve been using Google Drive for a long time.
I think that the success of Dropbox caused Google to kind of change direction a little
bit with their online storage system, with Google Docs at the time it was called and
converted into Drive because of the success that Dropbox had.
Dropbox has a lot of users and they have made a very simple, very elegant online sharing,
file backup, file sharing system and Dropbox is really the standard by which others are
measured and should be measured mainly because of its ease of use and the fact theyíve had
so much success in getting people to sign up for it.
They used the freemium model as does Google and most everybody else where they give you
a certain amount for free, get you kind of using it, seeing the value and then charging
you a premium to, in this case, increase the amount of storage that you have.
So most of us now are using one service or the other.
I would say the majority of people are still using a free service and they have to make
a decision at some point which one they want to use when they have to start paying.
A lot of people use all the different services with just little chunks of free online storage
and so their data is divided among three or five or six different online storage solutions,
probably not the best idea but certainly the most economical as far as that is concerned.
But letís see if we can drill down a little bit into the main differences between Dropbox
and Google Drive.
To begin with, I guess weíve got to talk price first and foremost.
When we talk price, letís first of all talk about how much free storage you get.
Now with Dropbox, you start with 2 GB of free storage right out of the gate and then if
you refer to sign up, you get like 500 MB for every friend that signs up, up to a maximum
of 16 GB of free space.
Then once youíve reached and tapped out that 16 GB, you have to consider upgrading and
their plans are at 100, 200, or 500 GB for the end user, for the average person.
Business users have different plans available to them but that cost $10 a month, fairly
dear when you stop and think about it.
If we take a look at the Google solution, your Google Drive starts with 15 GB of space.
Now thereís an asterisk.
You share the online storage with your Gmail account so if youíve got a Gmail account
with lots of attachments, youíre already using up quite a bit of your storage.
In my case, I actually have a fairly big Gmail account and you can see Iím using up about
2.35 GB, most of that is in email, of my free 15 GB thatís included with my Gmail or my
Google Drive account.
Itís all Google account.
Itís all kind of all together.
Thatís one of the real benefits and thatís one of the things that Google is going to
be counting on, is the fact itís so convenient because all of our Google Plus, our Google
Drive, our Gmail account are all in the same account.
Now their plans if we want to increase to 100 GB a month start at $4.99 and thatís
a lot of online storage.
For the same price as youíre going to pay for 100 GB of Dropbox storage, youíre going
to get 200 GB of storage in Google.
I donít think that thereís a big difference between how secure your data is online with
either of these carriers.
They both offer two-step authentication so really when we stop and think about just how
much it costs, first of all how much you get for free and then how much you get when you
pay for storage, Google Drive really comes out pretty far ahead of Dropbox.
Thatís step one.
Weíve established that as far as bang for your buck, storage for your buck, your free
buck or your paid buck, Google Drive wins.
And for a lot of people thatís going to be end of the story.
Theyíre just going to be well, Iím going to use Google Drive then.
But that is not the end of the story because itís how we also use the software and how
easy it is to use which really comes into play as well.
Now as far as sharing files and moving files into and storing them either of the devices,
they both come with desktop clients.
Now we can see mine installed here.
This is my Dropbox account right here which you can see I have access to here and my Google
Drive, which I have here.
Now on the Macintosh, for instance, you can reach them and you can see all of your Drive
and your Dropbox folder, actually theyíre folders right within your desktop that you
can get access to.
Now you can install the desktop app on all of your computers, so Iíve got this on my
desktop and on my notebook computer, and then you can ask the services to sync your files
between those two services, meaning that you donít just have access to your files when
youíre connected to the internet but you also have access to all of your files that
are in these different storage devices when you are offline as well.
And theyíre synced so it acts as a poor manís backup system because your files are synced,
are backed up if you have two computers in three places, each computer and online on
the web.
So if you think about that, that is an excellent option.
Now because you might be starting out with a free service, in both cases you might want
to be able to go in and actually determine exactly which items are shared and not because
you might not want to share all the items that you put in your Dropbox or in your Google
Drive folder.
Indeed if you go into the Google Drive preferences, you can go in there and you can choose exactly
which folders you want to sync and which ones you donít want to sync if indeed storage
is an issue.
You can do that right within Google Drive.
Now in Dropbox, itís very similar but slightly different to set up the syncing preferences.
We go into the gear icon which includes Preferences and there you choose Preferences.
Within Preferences, you have to go to Advanced.
Itís a few more steps to get to it.
There we go into Selective Sync and this is where you have a very similar dialog box that
allows you to choose which folders and which files you want to sync between your different
hardware devices.
This of course also works for your mobility devices.
This is a great way to determine exactly what you want to sync and how you want to sync
and exactly what you want to leave where.
Pretty much a saw off as far as the syncing process between devices and the online world,
between Google Drive and between Dropbox.
The next area that I want to talk about is sharing and sharing files is one area that
I actually think Dropbox, I prefer using Dropbox, and thereís only one reason.
Itís the convenience of sharing documents.
Hereís how I share a document that I have in a Dropbox folder.
You go into Dropbox, you open your Dropbox folderóthereís my Dropbox folderóand if
I just want to share this graphic with somebody, all I have to do is right-click on it, click
on Share Dropbox link, it copies into my clipboard a link that people can click on to download
or to collaborate on that document.
Itís very, very easy and I do it right here from the Desktop client.
I havenít discovered a way to share a document using the Google Drive Desktop client.
Instead what you have to do is you actually have to go and you have to visit Google Drive
on the web, which means open your account in a web browseróin my case, Iíve opened
it here on Chromeóthen while youíre working on a document, you have the option to share
it or if you just want to take this document here, letís say I want to share this presentation
with somebody, I click on it here and then I choose under the More dropdown, I can choose
to share it.
Iíve got the same basic sharing options as I have in Dropbox.
Itís just I have a few extra steps where I have to go to the web and share it from
the web.
There might be an easier way to do it.
I havenít discovered it and I looked online and I couldnít find any easier way so I think
this is the way that you have to do it.
So the sharing is just as good as far as sharing.
You can collaborate on documents and all of those sorts of things but you have to take
these extra steps to get here.
Now while Iím here in Google Drive on the web, other than the price, what we have here
is probably the biggest advantage that Google Drive represents and that is they have this
series of tools available to us, including a word processor, presentation package, spreadsheet,
a forms creation tool, and Iíve showed you how to create free forms using Google Docs
or Google Drive in the past, and also a drawing tool.
You could also add other functionality to it here but these tools here, this basic Office
Suite is free online and available to us and any documents that we create here are automatically
save in our Google Drive.
So if you arenít using another office package, if you arenít using Microsoft Word or Microsoft
365 or something along that line then this is a great way to do things, using these word
processors and spreadsheets.
Theyíre not as fully featured as the Microsoft equivalent but they are free and they do integrate
really nicely here.
Mentioning Microsoft 365 opens of course a whole other can of worms because Iím only
comparing in this particular video Google Drive and Dropbox and we arenít talking about
SkyDrive and Office 365.
That, my friends, is for another video because itíll just get too confusing.
We just want winner.
We donít want if you do this and if you do that.
We want one winner.
Iím not sure Iím going to get a winner but we want a winner.
So this is, as I mentioned, this file, this ability to use the applications within Google
Drive is a big advantage for Google Drive.
And the last area that Iím going to talk about as far as this goes is how good the
search features are in here.
Itís almost unfair at this particular point because all of your documents that are in
Google Drive mean that you can use Google to search for the documents.
You can search for content within the documents and Google Search is the basis of their business.
So finding documents within your Dropbox folder is as good as your Desktop Search is, as good
as your search is thatís built into your operating system.
In my case, the Mac does quite a good job of searching my Dropbox folder for anything
I need to find.
However in Google Drive, Google, if you go into your web browser here, if you just do
a search right here within Google, it does a spectacular job of doing search.
This is one area that I donít think that Dropbox will ever be able to come up to and
meet the standard that is put forward by Google.
At the end of the day, do I have a winner?
I think if you are using Dropbox and youíre happy with it, you have a subscription and
itís working for you, I see no reason to change because itís an exceptionally good
product.
If youíre using Google Drive and youíre happy with it, I also see no reason to change.
If youíre using both of them but you really want to kind of hitch your cart to one of
them and you arenít already invested heavily in one or the other, I think Google Drive
is ultimately the winner.
Ironically, I say that but Iíll continue to use Dropbox because I have an account with
them, but I will continue to use both actually but Dropbox will still be my main storage
system.
But I would have no trouble at all switching over to Dropbox should I need to.
When my account is due, when I have to pay again, Iím going to look long and hard and
think twice about whether or not Iím going to remain with Dropbox.
I do like that convenience of file sharing but I like pretty much everything else thatís
happening in the Google Drive world instead of Dropbox, both still exceptional products.
That brings us to the end of this particular video.
I hope you found it useful and learned something from it.
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Have a great day.
Iím Steve Dotto.
Weíll see you soon.
[END OF VIDEO]