Google Drive Launch

The Google Drive logo.

Google has just unveiled their newest gadget, Google Drive. Made as a competitor for Dropbox and Skydrive, Google drive uses the same method, cloud storage. Google Drive offers free 5GB storage right off the bat, compared to Dropbox's 2GB, and Skydrive's 7GB in the new update - users previously had 25GB.

Users can pay more money for more storage. The highest amount of storage available is 16TB for $800 dollars a month! Not sure who'd need 16TB of storage, but there's a huge backup hard drive!

Google has also integrated a search feature, allowing users to search by keyword, or filter by owner, file type, and activity. There is also an integrated image search feature.

Wait! There's more after the break.

"If you drag and drop photos from your Grand Canyon trip to Drive, the next time you search for Grand Canyon, photos of it will pop up," said Sundar Pichai, senior vice president of Chrome, in a Google blog post.

Google Drive accepts tons of different text and video formats.

It seems that Google may become a competitor in the cloud storage market, but, like it's social networking site, it probably was too late.

Many SkyDrive users will probably stick with SkyDrive, as it costs less, 100GB for SkyDrive is $50 a year, and 100GB for Google Drive is $60 a year, not a big difference, but why go through the hassle of switching. However, SkyDrive offers a maximum of 10GB, while Google Drive offers a maximum of 16TB! Google Drive also offers many features that SkyDrive does not have such as image search.

For Dropbox users, Google Drive's prices and features may just be enough to entice them into switching over. Google Drive charges $140 less per year for 100GB, and also has many features that Dropbox doesn't have.

In preparation for Google Drive's launch, SkyDrive and Dropbox had big updates. Dropbox now allows user to send non-members access to their Dropbox via e-mail links. Before, both users had to sign up and share a folder.

SkyDrive has integrated the drive into Windows Explorer and Apple Finder, so it now works as part of the desktop. You can now access files on SkyDrive from an iPad and other smartphones, and many other features.

Cloud storage is getting more and more popular as storage devices rather than hardware such as USBs or external hard drives.