Google Drive has already helped countless individuals and businesses to do better cloud-based work in a stress-free and user-friendly way. Even when just using the free service, people find tremendous value in not cluttering their computer hard drives, and being able to access their work from anywhere. As great as it is, it’s not without its limitations.
Strengths of Google Drive
Let’s be clear, the limitations of Google Drive do not take away from its many advantages:
- Fast, reliable and free to access for most users
- Affordable prices for more premium service
- Familiar and easy for even new users to navigate and use
- Uses compatible formats to send files across different operating systems
- Attractive, with nice clean graphics
Limitations of Google Drive
On the other hand, there are some drawbacks, too:
Large File Limits
Firstly, Google Drive can be limiting when sending large media files, because the individual daily upload limit is set to 750GB in most cases. Only through payment can you expand on that. If 750GB sounds like a lot, then that’s most likely because you aren’t used to sharing files more than a few MB each, or possibly a handful of GB. In some industries, however, such as creative industries like film and music studios, that amount of space simply isn’t enough to handle even half a day’s worth of files!
Even if you upgrade to the absolute maximum of 5TB in a day, for some businesses that still isn’t enough when large files and different versions of files are being sent back and forth via shared folders all day.
Limits Within Files
Google Drive also has limits on what can exist within certain files, such as embedded images and numbers of alphanumeric characters going into each file. Google Drive allows for a maximum of 1,024,000 characters in a single document, and embedded images can’t be more than 2MB. Once again, creative industries, among others, may well need far more than all that to go into a single document.
Lack of Customisation
Google Drive has a standard format used by all its users, with very little scope for personalisation or customisation. This might be enough for some individual users, but for businesses who want to have, say, custom branded download pages, or special previewing abilities for certain file types, not to mention custom notifications for activity going on in the system, Google Drive won’t offer that.
Not the Most Secure
Speaking generally, Google Drive isn’t an unsafe environment, especially if you’re just keeping very general documents and files on there, but if it’s to be home to very sensitive files, private information like personnel files, or other confidential information, then it’s not secure enough. Google makes use of encryption keys, which if accessed by hackers means your files could be stolen. You need a security system far better tailored to defending proprietary information from possible hacking and other cyber attacks.
Risks of Third-Party Apps
Google’s software is created in the spirit of openness, which is why there are myriad third-party applications and functions that can be added on. For an individual user who wants to build their own version of Google Drive to use, that’s a good thing, but for a company in need of a cleaner, more secure and reliable system, they need something different. These third-party apps can end up clashing with each other, creating inconsistencies across multiple users, and they can even be just trojan horses for adware.
Google Drive is For the Masses, but That’s Not Everyone
In the end, it’s essential to remember that Google Drive is made as a mass-market product. A business looking for a more tailored solution will seldom get all they want from such a system.
