It’s Here…Google Drive

After 6 years in the making, the Google Drive is finally here.

But wait…what pray tell is the Google Drive you ask?

The Google Drive is a virtual folder that’s both local to the computer you’re using and virtual to an offsite server. The files, folders, and other types of information saved or dragged to the Google Drive folder can be access from anywhere with an internet connection and some sort of internet capable device, (e.g. Tablet, Phone, Laptop, Computer, etc.).

This sounds familiar…doesn’t it already exist?

Indeed it does.

Like many things at Google, they try to make good ideas even better.  Sometimes it works, many many times it doesn’t. With all of the online storage and cloud solutions being tossed around these days, such as DropBox, ADrive, and others, Google wanted a piece of the action and have since expanded their services into the virtual drive market with their Google Drive.

It’s pretty much identical to the DropBox system except they offer their storage solutions at a quarter of the price of their nearest DropBox competitor, and 5gb of storage space for free with a paid monthly service to expand the available storage space up to 16TB, can you imagine?

But what they don’t offer surprisingly is a referral to expand storage based on how many people are recommended yet. DropBox however does. Also slightly annoying is that it’s not yet ready. You have to apply for a Google Drive and with 24 hours they set up your drive. Also kind of annoying is that they share your space with your Google docs folder. That’s not cool. Or rather it would be if the docs were converted into *.doc files, but they remain in some sort of odd format called *.gdoc, then opens in a browser so long as your device is connected to the internet.

So which one is better?

That’s hard to say.

Mild annoyances aside, the DropBox and Google Drive solutions are pretty much identical. And when your this late to the party solutions either have to be significantly different and significantly better to get users to give up their current solution for another. Currently, I don’t believe the Google Drive pricing structure alone is going to capture many converters from DropBox and they may have to focus on the new markets or integration of their current services within the Google Drive system. You do get more space with Google Drive for the same price but….eh.

The Google has the potential to be awesome, but at the moment it’s just not there.

DropBox was way ahead of it’s time and is still awesome to this day. To find out how to install DropBox, check out this video on YouTube .

So why is Google just coming out with this now?

That’s a fine question.

It seems with all of the resources at their disposal, this sort of thing would be a weekend project at Google doesn’t it? But it took them over 6 years to get it working right. Which in itself wouldn’t be that depressing if it wasn’t compounded by the fact that it was already built by a third party developer 9 years ago.

That’s right!

There use to be a little free application called the GDrive that performed pretty much the exact same way that the Google Drive Performs now and shares the storage space used with your Gmail account. Also, there’s a paid application that’s been available for a while called the gdocsdrive (exact same thing as Google Drive) which now will be superfluous with the free solution available. The point is that Google had the opportunity to crush DropBox before it was even a thing back in the day, and now they’re struggling to catch up.

Either way, now that it’s here, Google Drive is here to stay.

Download both and make your own decision from the links on our Downloads page.