I ditched Google Drive for my own self-hosted storage - and I wish I'd done it sooner - ZDNET

Our gifting experts are obsessively searching for holiday gifts that are unique, thoughtful and suitable for any budget. Nextcloud is a free and open-source storage option that offers several advantages. Here's how it works. Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google. I’ve been a dedicated Google Drive user for years. It was always the easiest option to back up my important documents; it made sharing files easy, and I never had trouble with anything disappearing. Even though I blew past the free storage limit long ago, I was perfectly fine paying the monthly fee for the convenience of using the file storage system I was used to. Over time, though, little things began to give me pause about trusting years of critical files to one service. I started seeing horror stories about users being locked out of their accounts seemingly for no reason, Google kept pushing more and more toward AI scanning, and I finally started noticing just how much I was paying for storage. Also: How I tag my files to avoid endless searching and disorganized folders When I started seeking out alternatives, I wondered why I hadn’t looked elsewhere before. After some research, I settled on Nextcloud. I