For a long time, the only major file syncing service with a decent cloud backup option was Dropbox, and its cross platform compatibility across all your devices made it a firm favourite. Google was always rumoured to be readying “GDrive”, but it just never appeared. But a few days ago Microsoft announced that they are finally bringing Skydrive syncing clients to other platforms than Windows, so it was only natural that now was the perfect time for Google to also jump into the file syncing pool.
Google Drive is free, and users will get 5GB of cloud based storage for free. Google of course has the advantage of having pretty decent editing tools available in the shape of Google Docs, and Google Drive will also have some pretty great collaboration services as well. For example – if you share and collaborate on a document, you can keep track of comments from other editors in the document, regardless of the type of file, be it video, photo, PDF etc.
Just like Dropbox, you sync your Google Drive across devices, and your stuff is also safely stored in the cloud, in case anything happens with it. But Google’s Search speciality makes the cloud storage even more powerful – using OCR (optical character recognition), Google can scan your documents for all their included text, and then you can just search for text. Very much like Evernote.
At first you will get 5GB of storage, but it can be upgraded to 25GB for $2.49 per month, or 100GB for $4.99. You can even get 1TB of online storage for $49 – which makes us wonder when Google might bring out a Dropbox for Teams competitor.
So what do you think – is it too late for Google? Or should Dropbox be worried?
