As most people know, Google has launched its cloud storage service, Google Drive. For those of you that don’t know what Google Drive is, it is an online service to store files online and share them among various computing devices and people. Dropbox has dominated this service for a long time, but I think that Google will be the final victor in this fight.
Right off, Google offers more free space than Dropbox in the beginning. Dropbox gives you 2 gigs of free space, Google gives you 5 gigs. You can “earn” more free space from Dropbox by referring people to Dropbox (2 gigs per referral, 16 gigs max).
Google Drive integrates with Windows Explorer. After installing the app, it puts a folder on your desktop, as well as in Windows 7 puts a shortcut in your Favorites folder. So once you do the initial software install, you don’t have to open a webpage or 3rd party application to access your files on your Google Drive.
For those of you that use Google Docs, it tracks your changes too, so if you make an edit to the document and hit save, you can still look back at all your revisions from the past 30 days.
Google Drive can handle more than 30 different types of files, including Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop and HD video without having the 3rd party applications installed on your computer, which is a huge plus. For example if someone sends you a file to look at and it is an Adobe Illustrator file, you don’t have to go out and buy Adobe Illustrator or try to find a software download just to view the file.
Google offers tiers of storage capacity as well.
The monthly cost for upgraded Google Drive accounts ranges from $2.49/month to nearly $800/month. Here’s the cost-per-month break down for Google Drive.
5GB – Free
25GB – $2.49
100GB – $4.99
200GB – $9.99
400GB – $19.99
1TB – $49.99
2TB – $99.99
4TB – $199.99
8TB – $399.99
16TB – $799.99
By comparison, here’s the Dropbox cost per month and year.
2GB – Free
50GB – $9.99/month or $99.00/year
100GB – $19.99/month or $199.00/year
200GB – $200/year (5 Member Team cost per member)
If you purchase any additional storage, Google also adds 25 gigs of storage to your Gmail account that does not take away from your Google Drive space.
Millions of people already use a variety of Googles services everyday including Google Calendar, Gmail, Picasa, Google Docs, and more, so why not choose an affordable service that will integrate with everything they already use?
I have a Dropbox account and now a Google Drive account, and by far I love Google Drive. I have it installed on my work PC, all my laptops, and my Android phone. I can easily access all of my files instantly. I can share them via email as an attachment or a link with anyone I want. Since I already had a Google account, I did not have to go through another registration process and try to remember another username and password.
I’m curious to see if Dropbox is going to up their free space or offer something else to compete with Google….
