Microsoft releases SkyDrive for Android, continuing its cloud storage push

Just a short heads up: Microsoft is deadly serious about SkyDrive becoming the consumer cloud storage tool of choice. The product will be a key part of Windows 8, and Windows Phone 8 I suspect. However, Microsoft knows that to be truly mass market, all platforms must be supported.

To that end, the company today release a SkyDrive application for Android. This move is not a surprise, it had been announced as intention, but today the app has landed.

If you want to snag the app, head here.

SkyDrive provides consumers with a full 7 gigabytes of storage, making it one of the larger repositories open to the average user. However, now that Outlook.com’s email tool has unlimited storage, exactly how much a straight up gigabyte comparison matters is up to your judgement.

From its post, here’s what the SkyDrive app for Android can do:

• Access your SkyDrive—documents, photos, and other files, plus the files other people have shared with you.
• View recently used documents.
• Choose multiple photos or videos to upload from your phone.
• Share your files and photos—send a link in email or in another app.
• Open your SkyDrive files from other Android apps.
• Easily manage your files—delete or create new folders.

It does exactly what you would expect, in other words.

A final note: SkyDrive is a service that feels like it will be a key component of the larger Microsoft Internet strategy. How it will fit across platforms and devices isn’t perfectly clear, but how Microsoft integrates it will give us a view into its strategy. In a small way, as SkyDrive goes, so might go Microsoft’s other Internet tools. And today, it went Android.

SkyDrive also has apps out for Windows and OS X. Top Image Credit: Robert Scoble