The company says its new cloud storage product is an 'open platform', although the only third-party services offering Driveintegration come in the form of Chrome web apps
Google has finally unveiled Google Drive, although the long-awaited cloud storage service does not appear to have gone live in Europe yet.
Google says its new cloud storage product is an 'open platform'.Image credit: Google
The company said on Tuesday that the
service, which gives users 5GB of storage for free and offers
business customers up to 16TB on a paid-for basis, is an "open
platform" and can integrate with various third-party collaboration
services.
"Whether you're drawing up floor plans with a client, creating a
presentation with classmates or planning next year's budget with
colleagues, Drive makes it easy to work together," product manager
Scott Johnston wrote in a
blog post announcing the launch. "You can upload and access all of your files, including
videos, photos, Google Docs, PDFs and beyond."
The service was not available for personal or Google Apps accounts in the
UK and elsewhere in Europe, as of Wednesday. "The service is becoming available to users worldwide over the
next few days," a Google
spokesman said.
Unlike Microsoft's rival SkyDrive, Google Drive is able to act as a platform as well as
a document repository and sharing service. However, it appears that
the third-party integration it offers is only for web apps available via the Chrome Store.
"Drive is... an open platform, so we're working with many third-party
developers so you can do things [like] sign documents with DocuSign and
HelloFax, design flowcharts with Lucidchart and manage projects and
tasks with Smartsheet directly from Drive," Johnston wrote.
The deepest Drive integrations appear to be with other Google
services, such as Google+ and Google Docs.
Google Docs is built right into Google Drive, so you can work with others in real time on documents, spreadsheets and presentations.
– Scott Johnston, Google
"Google Docs is built right into Google Drive, so you can work with
others in real time on documents, spreadsheets and presentations,"
Johnston wrote. "Once you choose to share content with others, you can
add and reply to comments on anything (PDF, image, video file, etc.)
and receive notifications when other people comment on shared
items."
Apart from that integration, Google Drive is similar to SkyDrive
and more established rivals such as Dropbox, in that it provides
cloud-based storage as an alternative to physical media such as USB
keys or hard drives.
Business users can share files and folders with specific people and
teams, and also with customers and partners outside their domain.
One of the most interesting features of Drive is its implementation
of search. The service can recognise text in scanned documents, using
optical character recognition (OCR) technology. It can also use image
recognition.
Enterprise tools
Google also gives enterprise customers a variety of tools for
Drive. Administrators can use the Apps control panel to assign storage
to individual users. All data transfer is encrypted, and all data is
replicated in multiple datacentres — Google won't say which
data is stored in which datacentres, but most data for EU businesses
will by law have to be stored within the EU.
Business customers also get a 99.9-percent uptime guarantee and
24/7 support.
The service has apps for PC, Mac and Android, and Google is working
on an iOS version.The free iteration of Google Drive gives 5GB, which
is slightly less than SkyDrive's 7GB.
In terms of paid expansion for consumers, Microsoft's product works
out cheaper than Google's. For example, an extra 20GB on SkyDrive will
cost $10 (£6) a year, but on Drive it costs $2.49 a month, or almost
$30 a year.
The difference becomes even more marked for enterprise customers,
with that extra 20GB costing $4 a month, or $48 a year, on Google
Drive. However, both services are cheaper than Dropbox.
Consumer vs enterprise
According to Ovum analyst Richard Edwards, the fact that Google is
pitching Drive as both a consumer and enterprise product could be a
problem for some businesses.
"Google's marketing says you can have work and play in one place,"
he said. "A challenge IT managers will have is individuals using their
own personal Google Drive account for business. The average user is
just trying to get a job done."
Edwards also noted that, while Google does provide APIs for
businesses who need to plug into Drive for auditing and e-discovery
purposes, it does not provide an "out-of-the-box interface" for this
to be done, unlike some rivals that have been offering enterprise
cloud storage for a while.
Get the latest technology news and analysis, blogs and reviews
delivered directly to your inbox with ZDNet UK's
newsletters.