Google Drive is Launched with 5 GB Free!

The rumours of Google launching a cloud storage service have been around for over 2 years (if not more). Google now finally has launched this new feature called Google Drive.

The new cloud service is being rolled out for everyone with a Gmail account. Just visit the Google Drive landing page and check if it is ready for your account.

Google Drive Features

  • Every new user will be allowed 5 GB free. That is a pretty large size for anyone with normal storage needs. Amazingly you can move up to 25 GB for $2.50 per month.
  • The new service will work on Windows PC, Mac. It also has an Android app with iPad and iPhone apps expected in the future.
  • Files from Google Drive can be shared with others with just a link. This is a feature what was only released on Dropbox very recently.
  • Google is also bringing in OCR to Google Drive. This means if we scan a letter as an image, it could search for a particular keyword even from the scanned copy. The technology though is not very accurate at this stage.

Natural extension of Google Docs

I do think that Google will bring in more features than Dropbox does as Google Drive seems like a natural extension of Google Docs. So some of the features like collaborative work on a single document by many and seeing the changes in real-time will surely add muscle to the new product.

What remains to be seen if Google Drive is actually targeting Dropbox because I think they have their eyes trained more on Apple’s iCloud and Microsoft’s SkyDrive.

What are your views? Do drop in your comments.

Link: Google Drive

6 Comments

Gagan April 25, 2012

Buddy, its still keep saying “We’ll email you when your google drive is ready.”
Just waiting for that email 🙁

Aditya Kane April 25, 2012

I know its only active for a few hours now. Give it a day

Mason Disick April 25, 2012

Google is too late, SkyDrive offers 25 gb free.

Aditya Kane April 25, 2012

I know but that is only for users who are already using SkyDrive otherwise its 7 GB free. Also I know that some Windows users have not had such a great experiance with sync like they do with Dropbox. On Google Drive, we will have to wait and see.

Bharat Chowdary April 25, 2012

Great news, hope google will soon become good competitor to rackspace and dropbox.

Madhav Tripathi April 29, 2012

I am using Google drive and facing some issues and many other users are reporting issues. Every time you edit a document, it is uploaded the full document every time not just updated piece.