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| Google's rate for 100GB of space is cheaper than Dropbox but more expensive than SkyDrive |
Google has
launched a new consumer service offering up to 16TB (terabytes) of storage for
photos and other online content.
Dubbed Google Drive, the service goes head to head with rival cloud services such as
Dropbox and Microsoft's SkyDrive.
It offers
5GB (gigabytes) of storage for free. People pay on a rising scale for more
space.
Experts say
that Google is "late" to the market.
16TB of
space could hold more than 4,000 two-hour movies coded in 720p high-definition
resolution.
Cloud
living
"Today,
we're introducing Google Drive - a central place where you can create, share,
collaborate and keep all of your stuff," said Sundar Pichai, senior vice
president of Chrome and Apps in a blog post.
"Whether
you're working with a friend on a joint research project, planning a wedding
with your fiancé or tracking a budget with roommates, you can do it in
Drive."
The service
will allow users to upload and access videos, photos, Google Docs, PDFs and
other documents.
It can be
installed to a Mac or PC or as an app to an Android phone or tablet. Google
said that it was working on an app for Apple's mobile operating system, which
should be available in the coming weeks.
For blind
users, Drive can be accessed with a screen reader.
"Google
Drive will hit some competitors very hard and shake up the market," said
Hanns Kohler-Kruner from tech research firm Gartner.
"It
will also create another stream of more focused and potential ad revenue for
Google around the content of personal files on Google Drive."
Grand
canyon
 |
| Videos stored on Google Drive become available on Google+, helping to promote the social network |
Google will
draw on its search expertise to help differentiate the service.
Users will
be able search by keyword and filter by file type, owner or activity. Drive
will also recognise text in scanned documents using optical character
recognition (OCR) technology.
This would
allow someone, for example, to upload a scanned image of an old newspaper
clipping and search for a word from the text of the news article.
Google
Drive will also use image recognition.
"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 Mr Pichai.
The first
5GB of storage comes free.
After that
users can choose to upgrade to 25GB for $2.49 (£1.50) a month, 100GB for $4.99
a month, 1TB for $49.99 or 16TB for $799.99.
When users
upgrade to a paid account, their Gmail account storage will automatically
expand to 25GB.
By
contrast, Microsoft offers yearly contracts. It charges $50 for maximum storage
of 100GB.
Dropbox
offers individual users up to 100GB at a rate of $19.99 per month or $199 per
year. It also sells larger amounts to groups with the cost and size determined
by how many people share the space.
Facebook?
Cloud
services have become hugely popular as people seek to access content from a
variety of places and devices.
 |
| Dropbox helped popularise the idea of storage in the cloud, but risks being undercut by its rivals |
Richard
Edwards, principal analyst at research firm Ovum, said that Google was
"very late" to the market but that its move could spur others.
"Facebook
doesn't have a cloud service but this may prompt it into an acquisition,"
he said.
"If
Facebook was to buy Dropbox that would be a game-changer."
In
anticipation of Google's announcement, rivals updated their own services.
Dropbox now
allows users to give non-members access to files via emailed links. Until now
it had required both parties to sign up to its service and have shared folders.
Microsoft
has also improved its SkyDrive service.
Among other
features, it has integrated the drive into Windows Explorer and Apple's Finder
so that it works as an extension of the desktop.
It also
added capability to access files stored on the drive from an iPad as well as
the iPhone and Windows Phone-based handsets.
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