Mountain View has finally take the wraps off its long awaited Google Cloud-based Drive, which can be used to create, share, collaborate and store data.
According to Google rep Sundar Pichai, Drive allows users to upload and access all of their files, including videos, photos, Google Docs, PDFs and more.
“All your stuff is just… there. You can access your stuff from anywhere—on the web, in your home, at the office, while running errands and from all of your devices,” explained Pichai.
“You can install Drive on your Mac or PC and can download the Drive app to your Android phone or tablet. We’re also working hard on a Drive app for your iOS devices. And regardless of platform, blind users can access Drive with a screen reader.”
As expected, Google Docs is built right into Google Drive, so users can continue working with others in real time on documents, spreadsheets and presentations. In addition, Drive is capable of recognizing text in scanned documents using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology.
“Let’s say you upload a scanned image of an old newspaper clipping. You can search for a word from the text of the actual article. … We also use image recognition so that if you drag and drop photos from your Grand Canyon trip into Drive, you can later search for [grand canyon] and photos of its gorges should pop up,” Pichai added.
Google Drive currently offers users 5GB of free storage. Upgrade options include 25GB for $2.49/month, 100GB for $4.99/month and 1TB for $49.99/month. Note: Drive subscribers who upgrade to a paid account will also see their Gmail account storage expand to 25GB.
