Now that Google has finally released Drive, there’s been adequate time to compare it to Dropbox and the other services out there. Drive brings something really interesting to the cloud world, especially by allowing third party apps to interact with it. And, of course, the real strength behind Drive will be how it ties into Google’s other products. There is one part of the Google ecosystem, however, that I feel Drive could be incredibly powerful, but it doesn’t seem like Google is moving in that direction yet. If Google were to take Drive and make it your backup site for your Android phone, it would make the platform more powerful than anything else in the mobile world.
The New Phone Dilemma
Everyone deals with the same struggle when they get a new phone, especially a smartphone. You have to migrate your whole world over to this new device. As it stands right now, the restore process is a usually huge pain. I’ve heard horror stories of four hour recoveries when the iPhone 4S was released, especially from users who kept their entire lives on their phone.
As it stands right now, the cloud-happy Google tries to minimize the frustration of this process through your Google account. As long as all of your data — your contacts and so forth — are stored with Google, your whole world is re-synced to your new device in minutes.
Well, at least that is what it looks like on the surface. Sure, you get your contacts and your emails and your calendar, and Android 4.0 devices will even start syncing apps, but where’s all the stuff from inside that app? Where are my scores from the hours of my life wasted on Angry Birds, or my settings and keyboard layout from Able Remote? All of that stuff is gone as soon as you switch phones.
Google could turn over their APIs for Drive into mobile APIs that would allow for developers to sync their internal game data to a secure area in Drive. The user wouldn’t need to have access to the information, just make it available when you install an app that authorizes with your Google account. This could be similar to how Microsoft has allowed developers limited access to SkyDrive, but with the specific intent of storing app data to be restored at a later point.
All of the pieces are there, and the end result would be a totally seamless move from device to device, which is one of the biggest reasons hardcore Android users even root their phones anymore. Apps like Titanium Backup scrape all of the data off of your phone and allow you to paste it onto another device, so you don’t lose all of the data form within your apps. This is clearly a feature that users want, and Google has the power to offer it.
The Problems with Offering App Immortality
There is bound to be some hesitation to implement something like this in certain apps. Games have started growing a social element, with services like OpenFeint, and in some cases, a high score can yield unlockabe items that other users would need to pay for. If users were to have access to the game data, they could manipulate systems and end up costing these game developers money.
While I am personally not the type of person to immediately assume that all of my users want to steal, the concerns are legitimate. If Google were to be able to lock the data down somehow, or require some authentication between your device and the game to approve the merging of the data, that would probably solve most of those concerns.
The secondary issue behind merging game data is the possibility that users will just keep playing the same game, for the purpose of completing the entire game. Many of the more popular games in the smartphone world have reached the point where there are releasing sequels and expansions. Personally, when I moved to a new device after having spent more time then I am willing to admit playing Mini Squadron, I saw the special edition of the game in the Play Store and didn’t feel the need to install the previous one. I had played enough of it after all, so it was time to see what the new game had to offer.
Any way you look at it, the fear of loss revenue could cause problems for a Drive filled app experience.
Final Thoughts
Google could reach into this situation and offer a really powerful tool for their platform. The company could make it possible for users to experience a seamless transfer from device to device. We already know that it is possible — anyone who has ever used a rooted app to backup their phone has found that being able to merge your app data to a new phone is really sweet. By offering the control of this to the app developers, it seems like the end result would be a no-brainer that anyone would appreciate having.
