Replace hard drives with Google Drive

Trash you hard drives and pen drives - 'Google Drive' will let you store all your data online and you just need a data connection on your laptop, phone and tab to access and store the data. The launch is sure to turn the heat on similar services like Dropbox and SkyDrive.

IN A move that could render hard drives and pen drives obsolete,GoogleInc has launched ‘Google Drive’ where users can store music, pictures and other data including the PDF files. This is also seen as the next step in the evolution of Google docs, where users will play with their data in a particular cloud.

According to the Telegraph, the service will build on existing ‘Docs’ word processing software and the service will be accessible from anywhere on mobiles, tablets and PCs. Besides letting users to comment on the documents, they can share and store online their favourite songs, movies and pictures taken on a holiday. The app is even rumoured to let users edit the videos within Drive online.

“You can get started with 5GB of storage for free—that’s enough to store the high-res photos of your trip to the Mt. Everest, scanned copies of your grandparents’ love letters or a career’s worth of business proposals, and still have space for the novel you’re working on,” Mail Online quoted Google.

Users would be allowed 5GB free space, 25GB for $2.49/month, 100GB for $4.99/month or even 1TB for $49.99/month. Another benefit that Google says is that once you upgrade to a paid account, your Gmail account storage will also expand to 25GB.

Using Optical Character recognition (OCR) technology, users can even recognise text in scanned documents like old newspaper clippings. Cloud services like Dropbox, Microsoft’s SkyDrive and Apple’s iCloud are already a rage among consumers and Google Drive, coming from Internet search engine giant will certainly add to the competition and people can’t say no without checking the app.

Dropbox charges $19.99 for an equivalent service, but Microsoft’s less popular SkyDrive costs £32 per year for its nearest equivalent. A terabyte of Drive storage will cost $49.99 per month; DropBox charges $795 per year for five users to have unlimited access, which is its closest package, according to the Telegraph.

Posted in: Gadget News