Google Drive official: 5GB of free storage, business-focused approach (video)

google drive

If it happened any other way, it just wouldn't be as satisfying, now would it? After years of leaks, murmurs, hubbub and other familiar synonyms, Google's mythical cloud storage platform is now official... sort of. As Lady Fate would have it, the company apparently outed a memo of the features on its French blog earlier today, but before it could yank the 'pull' switch, an eagle-eyed reader managed to grab the text and run it through -- surprise, surprise -- Google Translate. What's left is an official-as-you'll-get-right-now transcript of Google Drive's features, but contrary to the hype, it all feels way more enterprise-centric than consumers may have wanted. For starters, there's no real mention of music (we guess Google Music is on its own, there), and there's just 5GB of free storage for "documents, videos, photos, Google Docs, PDFs, etc." According to the brief, it's designed to let users "live, work and play in the cloud," with direct integration with Docs and Google+.

We're also told that Drive can be installed on one's Mac, PC or Android phone / tablet, while an iOS version will be "available in the coming weeks." Of note, Google's making this accessible to visually impaired consumers with the use of a screen reader. As for features? Naturally, Google's flexing its search muscles in as many ways as possible; if you scan in a newspaper clipping, a simple Search All within Drive will allow results to appear directly from said clipping. If you upload a shot of the Eiffel Tower, it'll show up whenever you search for the aforesaid icon. Moreover, Drive will allow folks to open over 30 types of documents directly from a web browser, including HD video, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop and more -- "even without the software installed on your computer." For those concerned about access, the new platform will have the same infrastructure as any other Google Apps services, giving admins a familiar set of management tools on that end.

On the topic of storage, just 5GB are provided gratis, with 25GB costing $2.49 per month, 100GB running you $4.99 per month and 1TB demanding $49.99 per month, with a maximum of 16TB ($799.99 per month, if you're curious) per user; thankfully, Google Docs will not be included in your usage total. Finally, the note played up the ability to "attach documents directly into your Drive Gmail," and given that it's intended to be an open platform, Goog's promising to work with third party developers in order to enhance Drive's functionality even further. The source link below is still dead as of right now, but it simply can't be long before the lights are officially turned on. Oh, and if you're not enamored at the moment, the outfit's suggesting that "many more developments" will be arriving in the coming weeks.

Update: It's live on the Google Play store, and a pair of explanatory videos are embedded after the break!

Continue reading Google Drive official: 5GB of free storage, business-focused approach (video)

Google Drive official: 5GB of free storage, business-focused approach (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 24 Apr 2012 11:23:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Gurwin Sturm (Google+), Fran?ois Bacconnet (Google+)  |  sourceTechCrunch, Google Drive, Google Play  | Email this | Comments

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Google, an underdog in Asia, lays plans for Taiwan data center

Taiwan gets Internet traffic easily from the United States. I sits at the ends of undersea cables that extend directly from North America before branching off to other parts of Asia.

Google dominates Internet search engines by such a wide margin in the United States that it?s a verb as well as the corporate name of its Silicon Valley-based creator.

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But in China, Google vies with the local, government-approved search engine Baidu ? which means 100 degrees ? and lags South Korea?s local brand Naver. It competes head on against fellow American company Yahoo for searches in Taiwan, splitting traffic roughly 50-50. Yahoo has also held a historic grip on Japan.

So this week, the 14-year-old Google announced that by the end of next year, it would open a data center in Taiwan to improve search speeds and reliability around the region.

Google has already started building data centers in Hong Kong and Singapore. But the larger one in Taiwan comes with government incentives and will boast a specific geographic advantage. That is, Taiwan gets Net traffic easily from the United States, home to Google and the source of numerous Internet search results, as it sits at the ends of undersea cables that extend directly here from North America before branching off to other parts of Asia.

Google will spend a combined $700 million on the three centers, which generally house computers and storage systems that help speed connections and keep them secure.

?More new Internet users are coming online everyday here in Asia than anywhere else in the world,? Google?s Asia Pacific President Daniel Alegre said at a groundbreaking ceremony on Tuesday at the coastal facility in Taiwan. ?That is why we are building data centers in Asia ??to ensure that our users here have the fastest, most reliable access possible to all of our services, so they can continue putting them to work.?

Google?s Taiwan data center will speed up searches particularly in China, which is just 160 kilometers (100 miles) away but has sought to censor Web searches. Baidu now controls about 75 percent of the searches in China.

?That?s a key, to serve China,? says Marvin Ma, software and services analyst with the market research firm IDC in Taipei. ?China will notice a clear improvement. And this way Google can avoid the censorship problem.?

In 2010, Google shut down its locally based Chinese search engine after a dispute with the communist government over censorship and cyber-attacks, a row that prompted harsh words from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Google won?t give market shares for Asia or estimate the overall number of users in the region. In South Korea, Naver still handles about two-thirds of the Internet searches, analysts estimate. But two years ago, Google and Yahoo signed a search-engine technology deal that has muffled the rivalry in Japan.

Google is also catching up in Taiwan as the ever popular Yahoo retrenches, with reports of layoffs in the pipeline, says Jamie Lin, founding partner with Taipei-based tech investor appWorks Ventures. ?If they don?t make any mistakes, Google is going to be the dominant player in a couple of years,? he says.

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