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