The highly rumored Google Drive is finally available to the public.
As part of its basic offering, Google Drive integrates with Google Docs, allowing for collaboration on documents, spreadsheets and presentations, with full revision support. It’s now also possible to add and reply to comments with other users over any shared file. Aside from web-browser access, Google Drive also has clients for PC, Mac and Android, with iOS apps to follow in the near future.
One feature that makes Google Drive stand out from the crowd, is its advanced file search capabilities. Aside from the powerful keyword search that is to be expected of Google, it is also possible to search for text in scanned documents thanks to Cloud-based OCR; it’s even possible to drag-and-drop an image to have Drive search for the closet match. Google states that the tech is in the early stages and expects it to improve rapidly.
Over 30 file-formats will open natively in the Drive browser, amongst which are Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and HD video. Google is also working with third-party developers to bring apps that will enable users to perform tasks such as, sending faxes, edit videos and create website mock-ups directly from Drive.
No doubt our readers are interested in Google’s costs for space, well here they are:
| Drive Storage | Gmail Sorage | Picasa Storage | Cost Per Month |
| 5GB | 10GB | 1GB | Free |
| 25GB | 25GB | 30GB | $2.49 |
| 100GB | 25GB | 100GB | $4.99 |
| 200GB | 25GB | 200GB | $9.99 |
| 400GB | 25GB | 400GB | $19.99 |
| 1TB | 25GB | 1TB | $49.99 |
| 2TB | 25GB | 2TB | $99.99 |
| 4TB | 25GB | 4TB | $199.99 |
| 8TB | 25GB | 8TB | $399.99 |
| 16TB | 25GB | 16TB | $799.99 |
Source: Hexus
