Glide OS gets its own 'GDrive' with free 30GB
Online operating system Glide launches its own free storage solution that's giving users 30 gigabytes for storing files in the cloud.
Web "operating system" Glide on Thursday finally gave a name to its online storage service, calling it the "GDrive." It also bumped its capacity from 20GB to 30GB, making it one of the largest free storage offerings on the Web.
The news comes just two days after Google launched its own storage service, something that was widely expected to be called the GDrive. Glide's CEO and founder, Donald Leka, told CNET in a phone call on Thursday that his company simply jumped on Google's failure to claim it. "It was a rumored name," he said. "We looked at it and we said 'wait a minute, they should have used it!' so we decided to use it instead."
Despite the familiarity some users may have had with the GDrive moniker, the two offerings are quite different, with the main differentiation being privacy. Unlike Google, Glide does not scan through user-uploaded files for advertising purposes, something Leka said his company would never do. "I think people, for some reason, are not concerned about the issue of collection of data," Leka said. "I don't think people are fully aware of it for some reason. I don't know why that is."
On the feature front, the two also differ. For instance, Glide is giving users 30GB instead of 1GB, all without any individual file size restrictions. It's also charging quite a bit less for additional storage, at $0.20 per gigabyte per year instead of Google's $0.25 per GB/year, something that can add up for users who end up paying for large chunks of storage over a long period of time. However, just like Google, Glide requires users to buy additional storage in one chunk. Currently, that's an extra 220GB, which costs users $50 a year, though Leka said that his company is evaluating a single gigabyte purchase system that would let users buy only what they need, when they need it.
Next week Glide plans to introduce a revamped version of its Web file browser, something Leka compared to Apple's Finder. Leka said it will make it easier to browse and sort through files, as well as choose where they go at the time of upload.
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