Post by LWPD on Apr 19, 2012 19:06:13 GMT -5
Next week Google is anticipated to launch Google Drive. The cloud service is rumored to offer 5 gigs of storage for free. I'll insert the sign-up link once its officially live.
Courtesy of Wall Street Journal
Google Drive Readies for Launch
By Amit Agarwal
Google isn’t new to online storage, it’s been keeping your photos (Picasa), documents (Google Docs), and other files in the cloud for years. But now the company is gearing up to launch a product that is purely focused on file storage and synchronization.
The product is called Google Drive and it is likely to go after the same problem that online services like Dropbox and SugarSync are trying to solve: how to add a file to your desktop and access it from all your other computers and mobile devices. You edit a file – say a presentation – on one device and the changes are instantly propagated to all your other devices.
The rumors started in February when The Wall Street Journal reported that Google is “expected to launch in the coming weeks or months” a mostly free online storage service called Drive. Tech blog Gigaom later reported that Google Drive is coming in April and, if recent leaks are any indication, this is very likely to happen.
Gadgets blog The Verge discovered a Google Drive integration page on Lucidchart, an online diagramming and flowcharting tool, that suggests third-party developers will be able to integrate Google Drive into their own apps and websites. For instance, if you are writing a document using a text editor on your iPad, the app can offer you an option to save that file directly on your Google Drive account.
Another leaked screenshot of Google Drive obtained by Venturebeat suggests that the service will offer five gigabytes of free storage space and that Google users can pay to add more gigabytes. You currently have to pay $5 a year to add an extra 20 GB of storage space to your Google Docs account and a similar fee structure might be offered for Google Drive as well. Dropbox on the other hand offers two GB of free storage, though you can add more storage space to your account by referring friends to the service.
TechCrunch discovered a desktop app for Google Drive, while a Google Drive launch partner told The Next Web that the service is expected to launch in the middle of next week and that it will be available on Windows, Mac, Android and iOS devices.
The domain drive.google.com also exists, though there’s nothing of interest there at this time except for a robots.txt file – an entry in this file (Allow: /a/) indicates that Google Drive is likely to be available for Google Apps users as well. The stage is set.
Google Drive could well be Google’s biggest consumer product in recent years, after Google Plus, and it seems to have all the potential to take off.
Google’s biggest advantage, other than its massive user base, is that it can easily integrate other popular services into Google Drive without having to rely on third-party developers to build the connections. For example, you may be able to save your Gmail attachments directly into Google Drive and access them offline. Or you may connect Google Docs with Google Drive and edit your online documents on a desktop without requiring external synchronization apps.
And because Google Drive will work with your existing Gmail or Google Account, it also means that you have one less password to remember.
Courtesy of Wall Street Journal
Google Drive Readies for Launch
By Amit Agarwal
Google isn’t new to online storage, it’s been keeping your photos (Picasa), documents (Google Docs), and other files in the cloud for years. But now the company is gearing up to launch a product that is purely focused on file storage and synchronization.
The product is called Google Drive and it is likely to go after the same problem that online services like Dropbox and SugarSync are trying to solve: how to add a file to your desktop and access it from all your other computers and mobile devices. You edit a file – say a presentation – on one device and the changes are instantly propagated to all your other devices.
The rumors started in February when The Wall Street Journal reported that Google is “expected to launch in the coming weeks or months” a mostly free online storage service called Drive. Tech blog Gigaom later reported that Google Drive is coming in April and, if recent leaks are any indication, this is very likely to happen.
Gadgets blog The Verge discovered a Google Drive integration page on Lucidchart, an online diagramming and flowcharting tool, that suggests third-party developers will be able to integrate Google Drive into their own apps and websites. For instance, if you are writing a document using a text editor on your iPad, the app can offer you an option to save that file directly on your Google Drive account.
Another leaked screenshot of Google Drive obtained by Venturebeat suggests that the service will offer five gigabytes of free storage space and that Google users can pay to add more gigabytes. You currently have to pay $5 a year to add an extra 20 GB of storage space to your Google Docs account and a similar fee structure might be offered for Google Drive as well. Dropbox on the other hand offers two GB of free storage, though you can add more storage space to your account by referring friends to the service.
TechCrunch discovered a desktop app for Google Drive, while a Google Drive launch partner told The Next Web that the service is expected to launch in the middle of next week and that it will be available on Windows, Mac, Android and iOS devices.
The domain drive.google.com also exists, though there’s nothing of interest there at this time except for a robots.txt file – an entry in this file (Allow: /a/) indicates that Google Drive is likely to be available for Google Apps users as well. The stage is set.
Google Drive could well be Google’s biggest consumer product in recent years, after Google Plus, and it seems to have all the potential to take off.
Google’s biggest advantage, other than its massive user base, is that it can easily integrate other popular services into Google Drive without having to rely on third-party developers to build the connections. For example, you may be able to save your Gmail attachments directly into Google Drive and access them offline. Or you may connect Google Docs with Google Drive and edit your online documents on a desktop without requiring external synchronization apps.
And because Google Drive will work with your existing Gmail or Google Account, it also means that you have one less password to remember.
