Everyone one of these cloud storage services (Dropbox, Box, Drive, iCloud, S3, OneDrive) has adopted the same mental model of file storage that computer systems from the 80s devised to mimic filing cabinets. Namely: folders. I think a folder hierarchy has some value but they should really all be using a tagging system instead. Orgs tend to have multiple hierarchies based or org charts, projects, disciplines, timelines. Being able to tag documents across all or multiple would make browsing to the right document less of a maze. And make search more accurate.
Tagging is hard from UX perspective, this is why it does not exist yet. Tagging system is at the core of Windows Vista failure, the promise on which Microsoft has never delivered.
Don't forget that Finder has customisable tags which sync perfectly across iCloud. They are a top-level browsing option on the iOS Files app. Probably you were thinking of something more tag-first but it does exist. :)
Personally I really like the file/folder model because I can sync the whole caboodle to my hard drive, copy it to a USB backup, possibly transfer it to another operating system, knowing that I've captured the whole story.
Except iCloud Drive file sync engine itself is not reliable, I lost so many edits and files in iCloud drive that I had to stop using it entirely and go back to rsync.
You used to be able to put files and folders in multiple places in google drive. It was either removed or made a more obscure feature because I can’t find it now. I suspect it’s too confusing to maintain long-term, leading to what appears to be buggy behavior.
I handle this by making a google sheet for a project with links to the main files, many of which inevitably are cross-referenced to other projects or standards. It works well enough, and has a killer feature: if you move or rename a file, which I do all the time if documentation is refactored, the link doesn’t break!
Selecting the file and using Shift + Z should do the trick. Though it's been a while since I did this.
It's really annoying how you can't easily make copies of directories anymore. They just create "Shortcuts" instead which act like symlinks. People though they were copies though and damn did we have a lot of accidentally deleted files these past few weeks. Also, their file recovery UX sucks.
I love tagging in Gmail, I use it extensively along with the important/not-important and all the different colored stars. It's allowed me to almost completely automate my email processing by bucketing everything into colored tags with auto-filters.
