Google has
officially announced the much rumored Google Drive. The free account, which is connected automagically to your gmail account, comes with 5 GB of storage for free. Also, your gmail account has 10 GB of storage and Picassa has 1 GB of storage. There are two main upgrade plans available: 25 GB for $2.49 per month (+25 GB for Drive and Picassa) 100 GB for $4.99 per month (+100 GB for Drive and Picassa) There are additional plans which allow you up to 16 TB of storage. This is all fine and good, but what can you do with a Google Drive account? According to their blog you can:
Create and collaborate. Google Docs is built right into Google Drive, so you can work with others in real time on documents, spreadsheets and presentations. Once you choose to share content with others, you can add and reply to comments on anything (PDF, image, video file, etc.) and receive notifications when other people comment on shared items. Store everything safely and access it anywhere (especially while on the go). All your stuff is just... there. You can access your stuff from anywhereon the web, in your home, at the office, while running errands and from all of your devices. You can install Drive on your Mac or PC and can download the Drive app to your Android phone or tablet. Were also working hard on a Drive app for your iOS devices. And regardless of platform, blind users can access Drive with a screen reader. Search everything. Search by keyword and filter by file type, owner and more. Drive can even recognize text in scanned documents using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology. Lets say you upload a scanned image of an old newspaper clipping. You can search for a word from the text of the actual article. We also use image recognition so that if you drag and drop photos from your Grand Canyon trip into Drive, you can later search for and photos of its gorges should pop up. This technology is still in its early stages, and we expect it to get better over time. If you go to drive.google.com you can start setting up your Google Drive, if available. As I'm writing this my Google Drive is not "ready" but I have opted to be informed when it is available. I read that Kryten has downloaded Google Drive and uploaded some files. Assuming he's not malfunctioning, things are working. As soon as I can set up my Drive I will have more information about the process and how the service works.