Google has just announced the availability of the Google Drive, except they’re not calling it that. They’re merely introducing it as a new feature that allows you to upload any file you wish to your Google Docs account.
According to the announcement, you’ll be able to upload to Google Docs any file up to 250 MB. You’ll have 1 GB of free storage for files you don’t convert into one of the Google Docs formats (i.e. Google documents, spreadsheets, and presentations), and if you need more space, you can buy additional storage for $0.25 per GB per year.
Combined with shared folders, you can store, organize, and collaborate on files more easily using Google Docs.
The feature is being rolled out across users over the course of the next few weeks. The most interesting development however will be once desktop apps begin integrating the feature. The likes of Dropbox and Sugarsync will undoubtedly be watching closely.
Why do you think they don’t call it Google Drive? Saving it for something bigger and better?
Maybe for the google car?
“You’ll have 1 GB of free storage for files you don’t convert into one of the Google Docs formats, and if you need more space, you can buy additional storage for $0.25 per GB per year.”
1GB really isn’t that much and I don’t know about anyone else but $0.25 per GB per year is somewhat over priced. For example, if you needed 250GB of storage, you’re looking at about $62.50/year compared to you picking up a decent external on Amazon for $59.99.
Then again, it all comes back to it being stored online and “in the cloud” so to speak and being able to access it anywhere. To some, it’s worth paying the extra price but you can see what I’m saying here. And too, it’s pay as you go which is pretty popular.
Perhaps someone in Peoria holds the trademark for “Google Drive” and is negotiating with Google, Inc. how much he’ll get for it!
I can’t wait to see how this works out. We use Gdocs quite a bit for our smaller projects, but the inability to upload image files force us to go back to using our project management software for any project requiring image sharing (and costs a hell of a lot more than this for the project space).
I can’t imagine this would ever cause us to ditch our PM software but will give us more flexibility if image files are supported.
Bah.. DropBox gives you 3Gb if you invite some friends. It will also automatically sync changes to your folder.
Pricey by the GB, sure, but you get extreme portability, plus I would assume this is as reliable as backing up my HDD to a portable drive, so I worry less about losing something. Actually, I wonder what the reliability of this is? What are the odds of data loss on this service?
But yeah, if they can add a Dropbox-style local utility, I’m in for a few GB.
one tool I use does the local drive mapping of Google Docs, so indeed it is GDrive. http://www.gladinet.com/gladinet-cloud-desktop-…