It looks like there is another kid on the block trying to get into the cloud business. Well, we use the term, kid, loosely. Google, the internet, technology, and, simpy, the do it all giant, launched Google Drive yesterday in hopes of improving the market. For those of you who are unaware of what exactly cloud technology is, it is an online storage system. While some people buy more hard drives or flash drives to keep up with their growing files and documents, many are flocking to the new trend of storing items on a third party database managed remotely. Essentially, you can store your documents, music, home videos, and anything else online. The advantage of this is accessibility. Information can be accessed anywhere at anytime as long as you have a computer and internet access.
Google Drive is just another addition to the already growing market. Companies like Dropbox and Box have been around for years now. Apple released iCloud with its newest operating system, iOS 5 and Amazon introduced Amazon Cloud which collaborates with its new music, ebooks, and video store. Yesterday morning, Google released information regarding the newest cloud system via the company blog. Google Drive is not officially ready for use yet. If you go to the actual link, you can sign up to be notified about when the system will be ready.
5 Gigabytes(GB) will be availabe for free to all users once it is running. If users wish to upgrade their account, they may get 25GB for $30 a year and 100GB for $60 a year. What really separates Google Drive from its leading competitors is it's company. With every tool and service Google provides, they try to unify the experience. Google Drive is fully compatible with Google Documents. People can now collaborate and share documents in a more efficient way. If your compnay is Google crazy like ours is, then it will fully integrate with your business.
Here are a few quick specs:
- Allows for up to 10GB to be uploaded at once. This is far more impressive than the typical 2 GB upload limits that are imposed by other clouds.
- Backed by the best search engine, files and documents can easily searched and found
- Regardless of the file type, you will most likely be able to view it even if you do not have the program installed. Anything form Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, and so on can all be accessed.
- Files and documents can be shared with anyone
- Comments and replies can be added to documents to increase feedback
- Revisions are saved. Everytime you make a change to the document, the new revision is saved. Older versions can be viewed for up to 30 days.
Check out what all the fuss is about.
What do you think of cloud storage? Will you be willing to use any of the companies named?
Nelson Ta is the Content Editor and lead blogger for Omnibeat. As a social media enthusiast with a extensive background in writing, he strives to help businesses and people understand the latest trends in social media, technology, and marketing.
