Google’s cloud storage service had been the subject of many, many rumors for the last few years, and it went on for so long that it seemed to be more of an urban myth than anything the Mountain View company was actually working on.
The best that anyone could make do with was a barebones browser extension called Gmail Drive that turned you’re the gigabytes of space free in your inbox into an online file storage device.
However, it stopped working after a point, and the world moved on to the likes of Dropbox, Box.net and even iCloud (though that’s meant more for syncing rather than storing data).
Finally, Google has decided to put a finger into the rare pies that it hasn’t officially had anything to do with yet – cloud storage. It has launched the Google Drive officially, and the service will offer 5GB of storage space for documents, videos, photos, PDFs and other files.
You can even upgrade to a whopping 25GB of space for an affordable $2.49 per month, 100 GB for $4.99 a month, or even 1 TB for $49.99 per month. Moreover, a paid Google account drive automatically upgrades your Gmail inbox storage from seven odd gigabytes of storage space to 25 GB!
Additionally, Google Docs is built-in to the service, which means that all your old Google Docs will automatically be moved into your Google Drive. The Google Docs client featured in Drive is full featured, meaning that you can collaborate on docs in real-time, share docs, add comments, and search through absolutely anything you’ve got.
Google Drive will be tightly integrated into Google+, and will allow you to link your photo uploads in the Google social network to your Drive account.
Drive will be available on PC, Mac, and Android. Customized apps for the Apple iPhone and iPad are said to be on the way.
[via The Verge]
