Social media reacts to Google Drive

On Tuesday, April 24, Google announced the launch of its long awaited Drive service, which lets users store, share and collaborate on files in the cloud. The service sparked widespread reactions across social networks.

While reaction to Google Drive was generally positive, some social network users were concerned about ownership issues, especially on Twitter, where users such as Cult of Mac (@cultofmac) tweeted "Google Drive Terms Of Service Let Google Do Whatever It Likes With Your Files." 

Another major concern, particularly on Google’s own social network Google+, was the lack of Linux support, causing the hashtag #DriveForLinux to trend for the majority of April 25 -- a campaign that also spread across Google’s Product Forums. This issue also raised its head on YouTube, where the top comment on April 25 on Google’s video explaining Drive was HyperKuba’s -- "WHERE IS LINUX CLIENT" -- with 49 ‘likes.'

Some social media users compared Drive to existing services, with Pete Cashmore from tech blog Mashable (@mashable) tweeting "Bottom line? Google Drive is Dropbox with double the free space." Other Twitter users such as Pienaru Adrian (@adi_pie) did not see what the fuss was about: Adrian tweeted "PlayMemories, Google Drive, Skydrive, Dropbox, iCloud, S-Cloud, AcerCloud, Lenovo Cloud. Aren't we going a bit overboard here?."

However most of the reactions to Google Drive on social media were positive. Many users of Google+ were reposting the Google Drive YouTube video and the video itself was watched over 832,000 times on YouTube since being uploaded on April 24, attracting, as of April 25, over 7,000 ‘likes’ and just 78 ‘dislikes.'

This positive reaction was also seen in a post by Google on its Facebook page announcing Drive, which attracted over 3,514 ‘likes,’ over 1,000 ‘shares’ and 277 comments in less than 24 hours.