Google Drive – online storage
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One day ago, Google presented Google Drive, online storage for files. This blog post summarizes what it is.
What is it?
Features:- An “online hard drive”, basically a clone of Dropbox. But you can search everything (including bitmap images where text can be extracted via OCR) and collaboratively comment on everything.
- Comments are either attached externally to a file or handled by Google Docs and stored inside it.
- Detailed control on who you want to share something with (similar to Google Docs).
- Can display many files in the browser: PDF, HD video, Adobe Illustrator documents, Photoshop docs.
- Files keep an edit history of up to 30 days, in addition to manually saved revisions.
- Capacity: 5 GB are free. 25 GB for “less than $2.50” a month.
- Google Docs: are on Google Drive, automatically, and can be collaboratively edited (as usual). When you upload a file, you are asked whether you want to convert it to a Google Doc.
- Google+: Attach Google Drive files to posts.
- Google Mail (soon): E-Mail file from Google Drive (just the link will be sent).
Comments
- Dropbox has a huge usability head start (especially on the Mac), it won’t be easy to beat.
- Google is smart to leverage Google Docs here, which are technologically impressive and very useful. It is interesting how the line between the two is quite blurry.
- A well thought-out product that fits nicely into Google’s current offerings. Especially Chromebooks should profit.
- Available as a webapp and for Mac, PC, Android. An iOS app is currently in the works and “98% done”.
- Small niggle: Why the Flash-only intro video? All Google would have had to do is to upload it to YouTube.
- The ability to display a PDF without a plugin is nice. Compare: Mozilla is completely relying on a JavaScript solution to support PDFs in Firefox [1].
