Ask HN: Why are downloads in browsers still default to local and not the cloud?

3 points by pHollda 3 years ago | 7 comments

Why, in 2022, are downloads in devices/browsers default still to local? Shouldn't downloads by default to the cloud not be an option in all browsers/devices by now?

It is 100% what will happen in the future for tons of reasons. It makes more sense as people download things to have access to them at a later time. The cloud is the cloud, independent of physical devices which do get lost and will not always continue to work. + Cloud storage has become a commodity.

Why isn't cloud download as default already happening? Sure, not everyone buys enough cloud space to have downloads be to the cloud by default, but it should probably already be an option in browsers/devices since lots of people do. Why isn't it?

version_five 3 years ago |

I hate your suggestion. "Defaults" inevitably seem to get used to push some thing I don't want - for example "open in google docs". I don't want another click added so I have to navigate away from whatever cloud storage is being shilled by my browser.

I think the answer is that some of the browsers actually care about how their users use them and don't want to add extra clicks.

That said, being able to specify a default location seems fine. I thought I could already do this in firefox, so of you want to, just setup the default so it saves to your cloud provider

TowerTall 3 years ago |

Now you have to download it twice. First download is to download to your cloud storage. Second download is from your cloud storage to your local device. I find download speed from my cloud storage to be slower than download from many websites so not only I will have to download it twice, it will also take much longer before I can actually use the downloaded file eg an installer.

PaulHoule 3 years ago |

Cloud Storage is a whole lot of trouble. It can really slow your computer down if your internet connection isn't the fastest.

Microsoft pushed OneDrive heavily when it first came out. They made it the default for Microsoft Office to save documents there, but frequently OneDrive was broken and when that happened 𝑰 𝑪𝑶𝑼𝑳𝑫𝑵'𝑻 𝑺𝑨𝑽𝑬 𝑫𝑶𝑪𝑼𝑴𝑬𝑵𝑻𝑺 𝑨𝑻 𝑨𝑳𝑳!

Guess how many times I've used OneDrive since?

wruza 3 years ago |

Are you asking why isn’t there a download to cloud feature, or why isn’t it a default? If the former, that would be useful. But changing some default is not something worth its own thread afaik, because that rarely changes defaults. Just go and change it once and sync the settings to the cloud.

mPReDiToR 3 years ago |

Why would I want to save something to someone else's computer?

To save something means to have it locally available, not copied from one third party to another.

Can I recommend you turn the Internet off for a few hours and see how your life goes? A week without it should be a dream, not a nightmare.

fnordpiglet 3 years ago |

Because you have incredible bandwidth and latency for locally attached storage which costs nothing more marginally. Cloud storage from an end machine isn’t particularly fast access. Imagine installing from an s3 bucket without downloading the binary locally.

AnimalMuppet 3 years ago |

If you put it in the cloud, have you really downloaded it?