Last month I discovered that Google broke their Drive cloud storage service: it will no longer mirror files on local storage. I’m not going to put my important data in the cloud if there’s no way for me to access it when I don’t have cloud connectivity. And it’s not like mirroring is a big ask: This is a basic feature of cloud backup going back many years. Google Drive did it for years, and Microsoft OneDrive (my primary cloud backup) still does it reliably.
So what does Google do? Instead of fixing this essential feature, today they sent out an Email inviting us to buy more cloud storage. And that’s not all! Following the classic infomercial strategy Google extends this offer: Subscribe to 2TB of Google storage (for $100/year) and they’ll send you a free Google Nest Hub device (which they otherwise sell for $100)!
Federalist 