Google has finally released their long-awaited competitor to Dropbox, SkyDrive, and iCloud, which they are calling Google Drive.
Like other cloud storage services, Drive provides a single location at which to save and store documents and media content that can be automatically synced across multiple devices. Since Google is also behind Android its mobile version of the service was released first. As of this writing the iPhone/iPad app had not yet been released. A desktop client is also available for Windows and iOS.
Users of Google Docs will find Drive very familiar. In fact, Google Docs is built into Drive. Just like Docs, one can collaborate with others on documents and can share content with others. Users can attach photos from Drive to posts in Google+. Work is also underway to allow Gmail users to attach Drive content to email, which can reduce the reliance on the use of file attachments. Work is also underway to allow third-party apps to access the content.
Drive supports a large number of file formats and includes the Google Drive viewer, which allows one to preview documents in 16 formats. Drive also tracks changes made to content so one view the revision history for the past 30 days.
Those with Google/Gmail accounts should visit drive.google.com/start to get set up. It may take a day or two for your account to become available.
For information visit TechTips: Google Drive
One Comment
Just a point of clarification: Paragraph two ends with “A desktop client is also available for Windows and iOS.” There are no iOS clients as of yet for Google Drive. I assume you meant a desktop client is also available for Windows and OS X, formerly Mac OS X.