Google Drive offers 5GB free, paid upgrades
Hayley Tsukayama, The Washington Post
If you need more space, the company is offering upgrades: 25 GB for $2.49 a month, 100 GB for $4.99 a month or 1 TB for $49.99 a month. Those who upgrade their accounts will also get bumped up to 25GB of storage in Gmail.
The pricing tier could be a blow to Dropbox, which offers 2GB of storage free, and then gives users the option of paying $10 or $20 a month to upgrade to 50GB or 100 GB of storage. It also matches the free 5GB offerings from companies Box.net and SugarSync, but offers far more storage in its upgrades, and for far cheaper.
Google expands its cloud-computing offerings with 'Drive'
Doug Gross, CNN
"Google Drive is everywhere you are -- on the web, in your home, at the office and on the go," reads Google's promotional page for the service. "So wherever you are, your stuff is just ... there. Ready to go, ready to share."
Google Drive will launch with an Android app for smartphones and tablets running Google's mobile operating system and in conjunction with 20 third-party apps.
As one might expect with a Google product, a big feature of Google Drive is a search feature that will allow users to comb through more than 30 types of files, such as Google docs or PDFs. There's also a limited image-search feature, driven by Google Goggles technology, that can recognize famous faces and landmarks, such as Mount Everest.
Update: Google Drive launches with 5GB free space
Lucas Mearian, Computer World
According to Google, users can upgrade to 25GB for $2.49/month, 100GB for $4.99/month or 1TB for $49.99/month. When you upgrade to a paid account, your Gmail account storage will also expand to 25GB.
As expected, the service will offer comprehensive search capabilities that include support for Optical Character Recognition (OCR) documents and image recognition.
Google Drive goes up against Dropbox
Associated Press, guardian.co.uk
Dropbox, started in 2007 two graduates from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is backed by $257m in venture capital. Google ended March with more than $49bn in the bank.
But Google's deep pockets haven't always been enough to overcome the early lead of smaller companies that carved out new niches on the internet. For instance, Google hasn't been able to build an online social network to surpass Facebook, despite years of trying. It's still trying to mount more serious challenges to online review site Yelp. and online coupon service Groupon.
Google also the advantage of being able to dangle the storage service in front the more than 1 billion people who already use its internet search engine or other popular products.
Google Drive: Google's Cloud Storage Service Offers 5GB for Free
JOANNA STERN, ABC News
Like many of Google's online services, it is very simple to use. Google will offer both Mac and Windows Google Drive programs. Once you have downloaded those, you will be able to drag your files into the Google Drive folders created on your Mac or Windows computer and they will automatically be uploaded to your Google Drive.
You can access your Google Drive on any web browser right through your Google account (the same one you'd use for Gmail, Google+ or Google Docs). There you will have control over who you can share files with.