You may have been hearing a lot of rumours about the cloud storage service by Google for a while now. Rejoice, Google Drive (What Google named its online file Storage) has finally been launched and made available to all Google users. A blog post about the new service was updated on official Google blog a few minutes ago. Those of you who have never heard of Google Drive, let me tell you that it’s an online file storage service where you can upload any type of file and share it among various computing devices.
Google Drive users can upload and access all of their files, including videos, photos, Google Docs, PDFs and beyond. The service is deeply integrated with Google Plus social network and Google Docs. The homepage of Google docs now opens Google Drive. People familiar with Dropbox, you may want to know what Google Drive has more to offer.
Like Dropbox, Google Drive offers its users to download the app for their preferred platforms. To get started, install Google Drive on your computing device running any of the following operating systems – Windows, Android and Mac OS X. As of now, there is no Google Drive app for iOS devices but it’ll be launched anytime soon. Install the app on your computer, and then you should see a ‘My Drive’ folder. Then, add files to this folder on your PC and they’ll automatically sync to all devices having Google Drive installed associated with your Google account.
Google Docs is built right into Google Drive, so you can work with others in real time on documents, spreadsheets and presentations. Once you choose to share content with others, you can add and reply to comments on anything (PDF, image, video file, etc.) and receive notifications when other people comment on shared items. Check out this video to know more about Google Drive.
With Google Drive, you can:
- 1.Create and collaborate. Google Docs is built right into Google Drive, so you can work with others in real time on documents, spreadsheets and presentations. Once you choose to share content with others, you can add and reply to comments on anything (PDF, image, video file, etc.) and receive notifications when other people comment on shared items.
- 2.Store everything safely and access it anywhere (especially while on the go). All your stuff is just... there. You can access your stuff from anywhere—on the web, in your home, at the office, while running errands and from all of your devices. You can install Drive on your Mac or PC and can download the Drive app to your Android phone or tablet. We’re also working hard on a Drive app for your iOS devices. And regardless of platform, blind users can access Drive with a screen reader.
- 3.Search everything. Search by keyword and filter by file type, owner and more. Drive can even recognize text in scanned documents using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology. Let’s say you upload a scanned image of an old newspaper clipping. You can search for a word from the text of the actual article. We also use image recognition so that if you drag and drop photos from your Grand Canyon trip into Drive, you can later search for [grand canyon] and photos of its gorges should pop up. This technology is still in its early stages, and we expect it to get better over time.
There is not much difference between Google Drive and its alternatives, some of which have been around for a long time now, such as Dropbox and Box by Microsoft. The good thing is that Google Drive is offering 5GB of free storage space to all its users. If you want to add more storage space to your account, you’ll have to pay – 25GB for $2.49 a month, 100GB for $4.99 a month. Unlike Dropbox, there is no referral program by which you could increase your Google Drive storage space.
You can attach photos from Drive to posts in Google+, and soon you’ll be able to attach stuff from Drive directly to emails in Gmail. As of now, the company is working on extra features i.e giving users the ability to send faxes, edit videos and create website mockups. These features will be soon accessible right within the Google Drive. You can try Google Drive cloud service by going to this address – drive.google.com/start.
Don’t forget to share your views on Google Drive. Will you be quitting Dropbox or any other cloud service you have been using for Google Drive? Drop-in your comments why you would want to switch to this new Google’s online file storage service.
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