Google Drive is here. Google Drive has been rumoured for a an extremely long time, so long in fact that it was seeming like it was never going to come, but this morning it’s here and you can access it. The Google Drive service initially offers 5GB to all users who sign up but also allows you to upgrade at a quite a decent price the options for upgrades are 25GB for $2.49/month, 100GB for $4.99/month or 1TB for $49.99/month. There is also options for up to 16TB if you so desire. Google has also advised that if you start paying for one of these plans your Gmail account storage will also expand to 25GB, the other bonus is that it appears that Google is already expanding your Gmail storage from 7.5GB to 10GB.
Drive is now heavily integrated with Google Docs, so all your existing documents are already included in the service. To this end, Google has updated the existing Android Google Docs app to be the Google Drive app, which you can upgrade if you have it installed on your device or install it from the Google Play Store. I actually had to go to the Google Drive start page on the website before it would allow me to access the function in the Android Google Drive app, so be aware of that.
Introduction to Google Drive :
Google is offering desktop syncing applications which you can download from the Google Drive start page : drive.google.com/start. Drive appears to work very similarly to Dropbox in that it sets up a folder on your PC and then syncs from cloud to PC. Google is allowing you to attach photos from Drive to posts in Google+, they also advise that you’ll be able to attach stuff from Drive directly to emails in Gmail soon. There is no word on a file size limit for Google Drive, but I’m currently attempting to sync a 2GB file, so I’ll let you know how that goes.
Exploring Google Drive :
Google is also offering an SDK which you can read more about on the Developer Blog, Google intends to be able to allow users to perform functions like send faxes, edit videos and create website mockups directly from Drive, so I imagine some Chrome extensions to allow these functions and more, will be coming along shortly.
This is a pretty cool offering, it certainly at first glance, undercuts Dropbox’s offerings if you take into account the effort required to get extra Dropbox space with referrals. I’m certainly going to be looking at the 100GB option, at $4.99 a month that is certainly a price I’m willing to look at. All I can say from here is ‘Your move Dropbox’.
Wow, apparently you can only use Google Drive is you read Spanish. Sorry Google not very helpful!
I`m using it and it’s in English, not sure what the issue is but definitely available in English
Keep my data in the cloud, with a US sitehost, on a US server, after the SOPA pre-emptive closures and takedowns? Not a bloody chance I’d ever consider thinking about the possibility of risking that.
So go back to your tape backups and 1963, SOPA didn’t exist back then.
here are a few reasons I currently prefer dropbox still (mind you, after only about 5 minutes of using google drive)
*GD doesn’t have a simple proxy selection option (I believe it follows IE)
*GD doesn’t have an icon for file syncing status
*Double clicking the icon in the task bar doesn’t open the folder
*No right click context menu options
Useful to have both, but DropBox is definitely still my preference for file syncing
AND DropBox is in English, not Spanish 🙂
It took as couple of hours for my drive to come online, but all good now. Suggest u be patient it will arrive 🙂
I can’t go to the google drive page without it appearing in Spanish, eventhough my gmail isn’t ‘spanish’ and language is set as English 😐 …
yep, same problem here.
Having launched Carbonite into Australia a few years ago I am excited to finally see Google join the race and provide more options for everyday Australians. The question some businesses will ask is where is my data actually held? It won’t be locally.
You are excited but then you question the product structure? Two faced….
Nothing two faced about it, I believe in online backup and having been waiting a few years to see what Google was going to launch. There was talk about this 3 or more years ago. Having spent time selling online backup to households and small businesses, there are plenty of challenges ahead to make this work in Australia. The tech community will jump on it but that isn’t where the real numbers are. Australians need education about backup, whether it comes from your regular IT guy or regular newspapers etc. Most people still simply don’t back up yet accumulate GBs… Read more »
Google Drive is not online backup solution, rather online storage. Carbonite is online backup or at least that the perception that it portrayed for the past several years. When you think about Google Drive, or Dropbox or Sugarsync, you don’t think about Carbonite as the same product in the same category. We provide online backup for our clients but I would not mix this with online storage offerings. And how we manage security of clients data is up to us, however our servers can get hacked just as much as yours can or Google servers. There is absolutely no difference in who… Read more »
Technically I agree but customers don’t understand the difference between something automatically being sent to the cloud and versions of it being kept there for you to retrieve when you want them and you keeping a copy there to be retrieved/shared from any PC/Mac etc when you need it. Anyway my point is that having sold it for several years, customers don’t get the difference, they see them all as very similar products and when they look at a solution they look at both. I have had customers come from and go to Drop Box. Whilst servers can be hacked… Read more »
I’m a current paid storage user (keep 40GB of my Picasa photos online). My plan has now been grandfathered but I can stay on it provided I keep it current. What strikes me about the new plans is how much less value they are than the old plans. Old Plans (per YEAR): 20 GB – $5 80 GB – $20 200 GB – $50 400 GB – $100 1 TB – $256 2 TB – $512 4 TB – $1024 8 TB – $2048 16 TB – $4096New Plans (per MONTH):25 GB – $2.49 100 GB – $4.99 200 GB… Read more »
Initially on my phone I couldn’t update the Google Drive app. It kept redirecting me to the Docs app which didn’t have an update. So I cleared the Play Store cache and did a FS. Everything was ok after that.
It’s not available in Australia yet?
It’s working for me, I did have to login via my PC at drive.google.com/start before it would let me access the Drive function in the updated Google Docs App(Now Google Drive App). Give that a go, if still having issues let us know.
No, I can’t seem to log in. I get this message:
“Google Drive is coming.
Want us to tell you when your Google Drive is ready? Let us know and we’ll email you at xxxxxxgmail.com once it’s ready. (Not [email protected]? Sign out)”
I’ve updated the Google Drive app and it appears on my phone, but it came up with a message saying it’s not ready and just loaded up Google Docs. It still has the Drive name and icon though.
Seems like a few people are still waiting, probably due to heavy uptake fo the Drive service.All I can suggest is keep trying.
With 25GB free on SkyDrive, I was really hoping for better…
Remember by rolling it out to all current users they have a massive installed base already, whereas someone like Skydrive have zero users and can afford to offer 25GB of storage to attract people.
Looking at Google’s many new products (and many subsequent failures) over the past few years, i’d prefer they start at 5GB and increase again in the future, rather than come out with 25GB for example and fail.
Did you do anything special to get it working Dan? I have 4 Google accounts and all say that my Google Drive is being prepared. I can update Docs to Drive on the phone but can’t access the drive yet. Maybe you were just lucky??
If it still isn’t working, I highly suggest going to the website( drive.google.com/start) on a desktop as that’s what I did, I also installed the Desktop client as well. After that it seemed to be activated.
it says my “Drive is not ready” yet… not to worry, I’m sure its coming
I’ve been using dropbox for over a year now, and have far too much invested in that service to be interested in google’s solution.
there’s nothing saying you can’t use both..
Cloud computing is a good concept but do you trust a data mining company like Google with all your data?
that’s only relevant if you’re a criminal or someone hacks google..
How is being concerned for ones privacy only relevant to criminals and hackers?