Google Drive is out! How does it compare to Dropbox and SpiderOak?
After all the rumours, Google Drive has finally arrived. In a post on the Official Google Blog, posted earlier this afternoon, Google announced the launch of there cloud based storage solution — here’s what to expect.
For starters, you get 5GB free — unlike Dropbox and SpiderOak that both give you 2GB free. If you want to expand this, the pricing structure is pretty simple.
25 GB
- $2.49 / Month
- +25 GB for Drive and Picasa
- Bonus: Your Gmail storage will be upgraded to 25 GB.
100 GB
- $4.99 / Month
- +100 GB for Drive and Picasa
- Bonus: Your Gmail storage will be upgraded to 25 GB.
The pricing options continue right up to 16TB.
Software wise it’s a simple download, much like Dropbox. Google Drive creates a folder, and you drop the file you’d like to sync into it. There are also a number of custom options for syncing specific locations.
As for the Web UI, if you have experienced other Google offerings — such as Google Docs — it will have a familiar look. In fact, the first time I logged in I was greeted by my Google Docs, plus a selection for my new Google Drive. The Google Docs selection had also disappeared from my Google menu. The reality is that Google Drive is an expansion of Google Docs, capable of storing any kind of file — not just the file types Google Docs was limited to. It all sounds pretty good and in the main I expect it is, for most people at least.
With such an aggressive pricing structure, this will clearly prove an immediate an real challenge for Dropbox. However, services like SpiderOak (with their encryption and ‘zero knowledge’ policy) whilst facing the same level of challenge for home users, have the advantage of their appeal to those that are required to meet specific data security regulations.
So, there you have it, grab your 5GB and give it a go. After all it’s another bit of free storage and you can never have enough.
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