Google Drive Revealed
Challenge for Dropbox, Box.net and others
By Jean Jacques Maleval | April 25, 2012 at 3:44 pmMuch-anticipated Google Drive has been finally unveiled but it was not ready yet when we try to access to the cloud service on our computer in France. Here is what Google says about it.
It is not just to store files but also share them with several devices. It also give access to Google Docs.
More than that, you can create documents, spreadsheets and presentations, and collaborate with other members at the same time, on the same doc, and see changes as they appear.
It tracks every change you make. When you hit the save button, a new revision is saved. You can look back as far as 30 days automatically, or choose a revision to save forever.
It’s also possible to send a link from Google Drive in Gmail and everyone will get the same file in the same version automatically.
Videos and pictures in Google Drive are available in Google+ to share with your circles.
It also contains a search engine for content by keyword and filter by file type and can recognize objects in images and text in scanned documents.
Furthermore Google Drive is able to open over 30 file types in your browser, including HD video, Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, even if you don’t have the program installed on your computer.
It is supposed to work on PC, Mac and Android devices, later on iPhone and iPad.
Prices
- Up to 5GB user’s capacity is for free plus 10GB of Gmail and 1GB of Picasa.
- 25GB costs $2.49 per month plus 25GB for Drive and Picasa.
- For $4.99 per month, you get 100GB for Drive and Picasa.
- A maximum of 16TB is available for $799.99 per month.
With this offering Goggle challenges the big ones (see below) but also more than 2,000 companies in the world offering online backup.
Comparison of major online backup providers
Service | Capacity for free |
Price per year for 100GB |
Dropbox | 2GB | $199 |
Box.net | 5GB | $240 for 50GB |
Microsoft SkyDrive | 7GB | $50 |
Apple iCloud | 5GB | $100 |
Google Drive | 5GB | $60 |