NEWS ANALYSIS: After a long development program, Google Drive has finally been released to general availability. But what should customers know about the platform before they start using it?
It
might have taken awhile, but finally, Google Drive has launched. Google has
been talking about its intention to introduce a cloud storage service for at
least six years. And rumors about the imminent release of
a storage solution to take on companies like Box and Dropbox started
percolating vigorously in the past few weeks.
On
April 24, Google finally confirmed that it was, in fact, working on a storage
offering and perhaps even better, it was making it available to customers in
the coming weeks.
Now
that the curtain has been pulled back, however, Google must begin the process
of informing the world about why they might want to use Google Drive. Sure, it's
a cloud-storage offering that works on just about any platform, but there's
much more to it than that. But before any consumer or even enterprise user
jumps onto the Google Drive bandwagon, they'll need to know more about the
solution.
To
help out, we've decided to take a look at some of the finer points of Google
Drive to help inform would-be users about why they might or might not want to
sign up for the service when it launches in the coming weeks.
Check
it out:
1. It's not unique
Let's
just get the simple truth out of the way first:
Google Drive is in no way unique. There are a host of cloud-based storage
solutions across the Web, including Dropbox, Box and Amazon's cloud services,
that perform the same function. But Google is Google. And that alone makes this
offering somewhat special.
2. 5GB of free storage
One
of the nicest things about Google Drive is that it provides ample storage for
what customers need. From video to music to documents,
users can save up to 5GB of content at no charge. Considering how many
users will likely sign up for Google Drive, that's an awfully large amount of
storage Google is willing to provide at no charge.
3. Google has integrated into its existing
solutions
As
one might expect, Google has integrated Drive into nearly all of its prominent
applications. Gmail users can send bulky attachments through Drive; Google Docs
users will be able to collaborate on documents from within the platform; and
Google+ users will find their videos and pictures in Drive instantly available
on the social network. Google is big on integration, and it has proved it again
with Drive.
4. Third-party apps play a crucial role
Google
isn't establishing a walled garden with Drive. Instead, the company says that a
host of third-party application providers will support the service, allowing
users to store and share content across multiple platforms. That's important.
In the online world having the ability to transfer data from one service to
another is increasingly appealing to users. It's a welcome move by Google and
its partners.
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