Google Docs: Upload Anything…
If you’ve ever been to a cheap Chinese restaurant, you’ve probably used the wooden chopsticks that come in a reddish-orange sleeve. If you paid close attention to the sleeve, you would have read something pretty amazing. After learning to hold one stick with your thumb and the other like a pencil, the sleeve informs you that you can now pick up ANYTHING!
Mrs. Digitante and I regularly joke that we can change the oil in our car using the chopsticks to pick it up and drain the old oil.
While that sounds ridiculous, it doesn’t sound ridiculous to Google Docs. Recently Google changed the way Google Docs works to allow users to upload any type of file, not just documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. Got some mp3s you want backed up? You got it. Want to share a program installer with others? No problem.
While chopsticks can handle anything, Google Docs does have a restriction that the file must be less than 250Mb (smaller for Google Doc files).
What about Dropbox?
The biggest advantage Google Docs new upload feature has over Dropbox is price. Dropbox is $19.99 a month (yes, per MONTH) for 100Gb. Recently, I purchased 200 Gb of space from Google for $50 for the year (yes, the entire YEAR). That means Dropbox is nearly 10x as expensive.
Do recall though that Dropbox comes with 2Gb of space for free versus Google which only offers 1Gb free. Any paid space you purchase from Google, including Picasa, Gmail, or Google Docs is available for any of the other Google services.
However, Google Docs requires that you sign into your browser (not a huge deal), but it certainly isn’t as slick as the Dropbox folder that acts just a like a normal folder on your computer and also syncs across the web.
A great feature of both services is the ability to publicly share your uploaded files.
You can send an invitation for people to view your shared file, send a link to the shared file, check out who can view and download the file, or email it as an attachment which will basically just move it over to Gmail for you. Note that Gmail has a limit of 25Mb for email attachments.
Anybody used the new Google Docs feature to upload their files? Got any tips or tricks that helped you manage your files?
4 Responses to “Google Docs: Upload Anything…”
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Great post comparing 2 incredible services. I use both Google Docs and Dropbox. I currently just use the free Dropbox service, which provides 2 GB of storage.
I’m glad to see that Google continues to make GDocs a more flexible tool. Dropbox beats GDocs hands down for syncing across computers, recovering prior versions of files, and Dropbox provides a really slick desktop client that does all the syncing for you.
For me, the advantage that GDocs has is all the free space, as you mention. One feature I’m hoping Google adds soon is the ability to store files received in Gmail directly to GDocs without having to download, then upload. I often receive attachments like PDF, DOC, PPT, etc. that I wish I could simply save directly to GDocs. It seems like this shouldn’t be complicated feature for Google to add, and I hope they do at some point.
By the way, I’m glad I read this post because it gave me some ideas about how I can utilize the new “any file” upload feature in GDocs. Sharing music and (small) video clips would be a great idea.
Oh, one more thing I like about GDocs is that I can files them on my Droid or iPod Touch on the go using Google’s web-based GDocs site. It is super handy if I need to look at some file for reference while I’m away from my computer.
Eddie, I was doing some testing and here are my findings:
-After receiving a PPT file, you can click the ‘Open’ link at the bottom of Gmail. Once open, you can click the ‘Edit Online’ link and it will convert it and open in Google Docs as well as save a copy there.
-After receiving a DOC file, you can click the ‘Open in Google Docs’ link. This one is pretty straight-forward.
-PDFs and other file-types cannot be directly transferred and must be downloaded and re-uploaded. If I had to make a guess, I think this feature will appear in Gmail Labs in the next couple of weeks. The bottom line is that it is a waste of bandwidth for you and Google.
If you want an additional 250Mb on your Dropbox, log in to Dropbox online and click the Getting Started tab. Once you have completed 5 out of the 6 actions, you’ll get the bonus storage space. I’m up to 2.75Gb thus far.
Thanks for doing that testing. Now that you say that, I do remember that it wasn’t “Office” files that I had a problem with saving directly to GDocs–it was PDF. The main reason I wanted to be able to save PDF directly was to create a “read later” folder in GDocs. I’ve found that Google’s web-based PDF view is quite good, and I like to take advantage of that for reading PDF on the go–whether on my Droid, iPod Touch, or just some other computer when I’m away from my computer.
And thanks for the Dropbox tip. I didn’t know I could pick up some extra free space the way you describe. I have, however, managed to grab some extra free space by referring others to Dropbox. I haven’t checked recently to see if they’re still doing it, but at one point, you could send others a special referral link that would get both them and you an extra 250 MB. I’m at 2.75 GB myself after referring 3 people.
I find that the free allotment in Dropbox is plenty for me. I don’t use it to back up large files. I mainly keep all of my “working” files in Dropbox. I have a number of files that I’m constantly working on on both a Mac and a PC. Keeping the 2 machines in sync with Dropbox is a dream come true. Also, Dropbox’s restore feature is the best I’ve ever seen, so it gives me a lot more confidence to make changes to documents and save frequently–because I know I can always recover past versions.
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