Thought I would chime in here.

> Also, I didn't mention this because I thought it was obvious, but you 
> don't exactly "mount" the Google Drive. Its basically like a 
> feature-deprived version of Dropbox with an even worse privacy policy 
> that only integrates with Google products. It is absolutely not 
> available offline -- and actual syncing has to be a deliberate choice, 
> every time, so actually saving to a local drive you own for real is not 
> automatic or even reasonably hassle-free. So this sort of sucks.

If you don't have a google drive client, this is correct. This means all linux, currently, but google drive on Mac and Windows appears to be almost exactly like dropbox, save for any differences in licensing issues - sync looks to me to be automatic on the mac, and is as painless as dropbox.

> If you've got no experience whatever with this sort of thing these are 
> probably the points you are curious about from a consumer's point of view.

Dropbox works fantastically with Scientific Linux, and it's been around for a while now. There's also sparkleshare, which is uses git to coordinate between your own computers. Dunno how well that works for people, but it's open source and doesn't look like it requires a central server ala google drive or dropbox.

Sparkleshare:
http://sparkleshare.org/
Dropbox:
https://www.dropbox.com/home

Indeed, you cannot mount a google drive like a network drive (i.e. no "mount -t googledrive"), and I suspect once a linux client is released it will be similar in scope and methodology to dropbox, as the mac and windows clients seem to be.

-Chris