The existence of this new product does not make users more or less tech savvy.

If a user goes from 1 copy (hard drive), to 2 copies, then it's a net gain for their backups.

If a user goes from 2 copies (hard drive, some backup system), to 2 copies (hard drive, Google drive), then yes, arguably, it's a net loss for their backups, because they can simultaneously have a HD failure and get locked out of their Google account.

But arguably, they could live in Joplin, MO and both of their current backups could be toast.

Best to have three - hard drive, backup drive in a safety deposit box, and Google Drive if you like the convenience and access and cost, and don't mind the privacy implications.

I don't mind the privacy implications. Google doing something evil with user's data would be absolute suicide for them.

The lock out thing is exaggerated. Having a Google backup is much safer than local manual backup for almost everyone.

I agree completely.

If you also use two-factor authentication, I daresay that you are in the 99th percentile, or higher.

I don't like being pedantic, but a sync'ed copy isn't a backup. It might protect against hardware failure, but it won't help against accidental deletion or corruption.

I'm not sure if GDrive has file versioning/restoration built into it or not, but there is an important distinction to be made here.

https://support.google.com/drive/bin/answer.py?hl=en&ans... notes that old versions are saved for 30 days or 100 revisions, which does provide some protection.

How many ordinary users even understand the term 'backup' is itself a big question!

The use case is simple - When I put data on something, It must be available to me.

I can't learn how to be a sysadmin or expect my father to do that just to use this service.