Mobile Scoop: Google announces Google Drive, gives 5GB of free cloud storage to all users

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Google announces Google Drive, gives 5GB of free cloud storage to all users

Google Drive is big, cheap, and aims to compete with the likes of Dropbox, SkyDrive, and maybe even iCloud

Rumor it and it shall become real — Google Drive, the long awaited, long anticipated cloud storage service from Google is finally here and it's as big and as cheap as we hoped for. Every Google user gets 5GB for free, and you can buy literally tons more — up to 16TB (?!) if you have the cash.

Today, we're introducing Google Drive—a place where you can create, share, collaborate, and keep all of your stuff. Whether you're working with a friend on a joint research project, planning a wedding with your fiancé or tracking a budget with roommates, you can do it in Drive. You can upload and access all of your files, including videos, photos, Google Docs, PDFs and beyond.

The focus is on sharing, storing, and searching. Everything. Google Docs is built in so you can start creating stuff. You can install the desktop client on Windows or Mac to get a folder going.

You can get started with 5GB of storage for free—that's enough to store the high-res photos of your trip to the Mt. Everest, scanned copies of your grandparents' love letters or a career's worth of business proposals, and still have space for the novel you're working on. You can choose to upgrade to 25GB for $2.49/month, 100GB for $4.99/month or even 1TB for $49.99/month. When you upgrade to a paid account, your Gmail account storage will also expand to 25GB.

Google has updated their Android Google Docs app, turning it into an official Google Drive app. They're also "working hard" on an iPhone or iPad version but for now, if you want to access Google Drive, the web is your friend. You can find things by keyword and filter, and Drive will even OCR scanned docs to make your life easier. There's even beta image recognition baked in.

Check out more via the links below, and the watch the video for the overview.

Source: drive.google.com, Google Blog, via Android Central