Head In The Cloud: Google Drive

Image via CrunchBase

If Disqus can do it, maybe Dropbox can do it. (Adding Disqus To My Blog Was The Easiest Thing) But cloud storage is quite a central experience and so is going to get a lot of attention from the Big G. Blog commenting is a sideshow by comparison.

Dropbox: 2 GB. Google Drive: 5 GB. Microsoft SkyDrive: 25 GB. Microsoft is the clear winner!

Google's Drive Adds to a Complicated Cloud

After roughly six years of rumors, Google has finally launched its own cloud storage and syncing service, called Google Drive. The service offers five gigabytes of online file storage for free and includes software that automatically synchronizes files between Windows and Apple computers, Android phones, and Google's cloud. ..... Users can pay $2.49 a month for an extra 25 gigabytes of storage, or pay more for larger blocks up to a maximum of 16 terabytes. ..... The five gigabytes of storage that Google now offers is more than the two gigabytes that's standard with a free Dropbox account, although Dropbox runs several promotions that make it relatively easy for a user to get five gigabytes or more for free. Dropbox offers 50 gigabytes of storage for $9.99 per month; a Google Drive user can get 100 gigabytes for half that price..... Microsoft yesterday upgraded the capacity of its cloud storage service, SkyDrive, which integrates closely with its Windows Phone software and the upcoming Windows 8. Users of that service receive 25 gigabytes of storage for free, and can pay for more....... Google Drive .. It is meant to be a place where you can work with data and documents, not just store them. More than 30 types of document can be viewed from the Google Drive site, including many video and image formats, and office documents can be edited there, too. Computer vision algorithms make it possible to search text in any images uploaded to Google Drive ...... build "the Internet's file system." ..... intense competition between Google, Microsoft, Apple, and smaller companies such as Dropbox.

Introducing Google Drive... yes, really

Just like the Loch Ness Monster, you may have heard the rumors about Google Drive. It turns out, one of the two actually does exist...... 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. .... regardless of platform, blind users can access Drive with a screen reader. .... Drive can even recognize text in scanned documents using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology..... Drive is also an open platform, so we’re working with many third-party developers so you can do things like send faxes, edit videos and create website mockups directly from Drive.

Just like there is room for more than one email service, there is room for more than one cloud storage system. I am not thinking 2 GB versus 5 GB versus 25 GB. I am thinking 2 plus 5 plus 25.

Edit videos in Drive? Wow.

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