Google Unveils Drive, Cloud Storage with Google Services Integration, No iOS App at Launch

Image: Google

Google has finally entered the cloud arena with the release of Drive. After years of rumors, the cloud storage service by Google is here. Drive allows users to create, collaborate, share and stored documents, movies and photos.

Drive features:

• Create and collaborate. Google Docs is built right into Google Drive, so you can work with others in real time on documents, spreadsheets and presentations. Once you choose to share content with others, you can add and reply to comments on anything (PDF, image, video file, etc.) and receive notifications when other people comment on shared items.
• Store everything safely and access it anywhere (especially while on the go). All your stuff is just... there. You can access your stuff from anywhere—on the web, in your home, at the office, while running errands and from all of your devices. You can install Drive on your Mac or PC and can download the Drive app to your Android phone or tablet. We’re also working hard on a Drive app for your iOS devices. And regardless of platform, blind users can access Drive with a screen reader.
• Search everything. Search by keyword and filter by file type, owner and more. Drive can even recognize text in scanned documents using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology. Let’s say you upload a scanned image of an old newspaper clipping. You can search for a word from the text of the actual article. We also use image recognition so that if you drag and drop photos from your Grand Canyon trip into Drive, you can later search for [grand canyon] and photos of its gorges should pop up. This technology is still in its early stages, and we expect it to get better over time.

At the beggining users will have access to 5GB of storage for free. There are cheap options for expanding the storage even more:

• 25GB for $2.49/month
• 100GB for $4.99/month
• 1TB for $49.99/month

Once you decide to jump to a paid account, your Gmail account will be upgraded to 25GB of storage.

To start using Drive, simply .

What separates Drive from the pack (Dropbox, SkyDrive, SugarSync, Box) is the Google Docs integration, the fact that you can create, edit, open lots of different types of files. 

As soon as we play enough with it we will be posting our impressions.