Mobile Technology

Google Drive provides alternative to Apple's iCloud

Google Drive provides alternative to Apple's iCloud
Google Drive offers 5 GB of free cloud storage that can be accessed anywhere on the web
Google Drive offers 5 GB of free cloud storage that can be accessed anywhere on the web
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Google Drive offers 5 GB of free cloud storage that can be accessed anywhere on the web
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Google Drive offers 5 GB of free cloud storage that can be accessed anywhere on the web

Google has finally released Drive, a new cloud storage option for all Google account holders, offering up to 5 GB worth of free storage. While it may be easy to draw comparisons to Dropbox, Microsoft's SkyDrive, or Amazon Cloud, Google Drive represents the final element of a powerful cloud platform, with services that rival those of Apple's iCloud.

Last year Apple announced its iCloud platform, giving users the ability to sync music, photos, and any other files they might have across all their iOS devices. The announcement was met with varying levels of fanfare. To those unfamiliar with the concept of cloud computing, it seemed like a powerful new tool. To anyone that had used remote storage before, iCloud was underwhelming, as the technology had been around for years.

However, this is Apple we're talking about, which has a tendency to make a phenomenon out of just about anything it releases. So, despite numerous teething problems, Apple reported that more than 20 million had signed up to iCloud in the first five days of the release of iOS5.

Enter Google

Google had been building up its own selection of cloud services for years - Gmail has always offered free storage space to its users, as do services like Google Docs. Having said that, it was with Android that Google truly pushed into Apple territory, giving users the ability to remotely sync music, photos, and contacts with their portable devices. With Drive, Google completes the platform, allowing generic file storage synced across PC and Android devices.Google has a bit of a modesty issue, having never triumphantly paraded its cloud services to the world, for with Android, cloud services have always been there. This is likely why Google felt it necessary to release a video reminding Android fans that Google's been all cloud for a long time.

Directly comparing iCloud to Google services results in near identical specs. Both offer 5 GB worth of generic storage, both have the ability to sync movies, photos, and music, and both cost nothing to the user. But while iCloud users are required to use iTunes for music and photo syncing, Google Music allows its users to simply select folders on their local hard drive, and any new music is uploaded and synced.

Google Drive also makes it easy to publicly share files and collaborate with other users in real time. And these files can be much larger than iCloud allows - a maximum filesize of 10 GB for Drive compared to just 25 MB for free iCloud accounts, increasing to 250 MB for paid accounts.

Ultimately, the great divider between these two services lies in mobile platform of choice, as it is extremely unlikely that Apple will ever release official iCloud applications for Android devices. However, Google already offers numerous apps for iOS devices with Google Drive apps "coming soon" for iPhone and iPad.

Apple's closed ecosystem that allows it to seamlessly integrate iCloud into iOS (and Mountain Lion) means that the majority of Apple users will probably stick with the "default" option, but Google Drive's wider compatibility and the ability to get a total of 10 GB of free cloud storage by signing up for both could help attract some to Google's offering. For users of existing Google services and Android devices, however, with integration in the "Google bar" found at the top of Gmail and other Google services, Drive seems seems like a winner.

Source: Google Drive

Here's a video from Google showing how Drive works.

Exploring Google Drive

4 comments
4 comments
limbodog
Who are all these people who are eager to give up ownership of their data?
Danny McVey
@limbodog - I copied this from a separate article that I think you may find enlightening.
The service got off to a rocky start Tuesday because of confusion surrounding the legalese in the terms for using the service. It made it sound like all of the files you store on Google Drive become Google's intellectual property. But apparently, the furor was for naught, and that the wording was necessary so that you can take advantage of all of its features. In order for you to let others work on your shared documents via the Google Docs feature, Google has to have your permission to "host, store (and) reproduce" those documents and to let others make "translations, adaptations or other changes."
Hope that clears things up for you.
johnweythek
i enjoy steam and other cloud services for certain types of data, but i'll keep details about my life, pictures of it and all that at home thanks. Plus no one is offering anything close to the 4 TB i wouldn't mind having a backup of.
Josh Teague
john actually google offers up to 16 TB of storage
https://www.google.com/settings/storage/