Guest Victor von Zeppelin Posted April 24, 2012 Report Share Posted April 24, 2012 Google have finally made Drive official – their own long awaited competitor in the Cloud Storage arena. Google Drive follows the template of many of its competitors, such as Box and Dropbox. Indeed, it’s so similar that, upon installing the desktop app, you’re given a drop box-style folder. With it you’re given 5GB of free cloud storage that syncs between your PC, Mac, Android and soon, iOS devices.<br /> <br /> A big draw of Drive is that it is combined with Google Docs. All of your stored Docs now appear when you run one of the Drive apps, and uploaded files are quickly visible in the web interface. It generally seems a quicker way to access your files than having to upload and download them manually.<br /> <br /> There are some places where Drive doesn't quite live up to its competitors, though. I do think some of these features will come as the software matures, but at the moment it’s a little behind. For example, Dropbox Pro offers a form of versioning called PackRat, which lets you dig through old versions of files to recover lost data. Another thing I really miss is being able to right click a file in Dropbox on my desktop and getting the public link to share with the world. I’ve yet to find similar capabilities in Drive (of course, sharing with other Drive users is super easy, but you have to do it from the web app).<br /> <br /> This may sound a lot like stealing ideas from Dropbox, but they’re plainly doing it best at the moment. While Google don't need a referral scheme to build their user base it was one of the big attracting factors for Dropbox originally and can net you much more than the initial free allocation.<br /> <br /> Some of you may think that 5GB doesn’t feel like enough space. Luckily, Google offers extra space for a small amount each month. Prices are currently only given in US Dollars at the moment, but an extra 25 GB for $2.49 (~£1.54) and 100GB for $4.99 (~£3.09) seem reasonable. Also included is a pretty huge 1TB, for $49.99 (~£30.90) per month. Buying any of these packages increases your Gmail storage to 25 GB.<br /> <br /> Google drive is available to everyone now. The desktop sync apps are available for Mac and PC, whilst the new Android app basically replaces the old Google Docs App. The instant integration with Android and desktop sync software has allowed Drive to become the biggest threat to Dropbox in the blink of an eye. It will be interesting to see if the gap between the two solutions closes, or if Dropbox is ready to put on its innovation shoes and beat Google.<br /> <br /> Find more here: Google Drive<br /> <br /> Also announced was the Google Drive SDK, which allows easy integration for apps into the new service. More HERE<div style='text-align: center;'><img src='a44620dcb3a16c6c3996cdf8e4230307.jpg' alt='' /></div><div style='text-align: center;'><img src='' alt='' /></div><br /> <br /> This item was promoted to the News page - click here to view. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Zarch1972 Posted April 25, 2012 Report Share Posted April 25, 2012 Luckily, those of us who purchased Google storage before the announcement get to carry on paying the previous amount. ie 80gb for $20/year. http://support.google.com/drive/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=39567&p=butter_old_storage Old Prices (Yearly Charge) 20 GB - $5 80 GB - $20 200 GB - $50 400 GB - $100 1 TB - $256 2 TB - $512 4 TB - $1024 8 TB - $2048 16 TB - $4096 New Prices (Monthly Charge) 25 GB - $2.49 100 GB - $4.99 200 GB - $9.99 400 GB - $19.99 1 TB - $49.99 2 TB - $99.99 4 TB - $199.99 8 TB - $399.99 16 TB - $799.99 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Dan Mullen Posted April 25, 2012 Report Share Posted April 25, 2012 I'm gutted because about three hours before they launched Drive I went to upgrade from 80GB to 200GB. It was only gonna cost me $5 as I'm not too far off my renewal date and I would have locked in 200GB for $50/year, but I thought I'd wait until they officially announced Drive :( Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest razzmataz1478 Posted April 25, 2012 Report Share Posted April 25, 2012 Hours before this micro$oft relaunched skydrive as a dropbox like service, but with a cap of 7gb. But if you were already a skydrive user before, you can get your 25gb back for free! Just need an android app now! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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