New Blog Post - What I Want Out Of "GDrive"

The mythical "Google Drive" has landed.

Google has, finally, officially announced that you will be able to upload ANY file format to your Google Docs account. This is huge for me. I lug around a 16GB flash drive full of "goodies" that I use to repair/tweak/fix friends computers and otherwise cause mayhem. This new feature would essentially negate the purpose for the flash drive as long as the computer has a broadband internet connection.

Granted, you're only given 1GB for free... the pricing is VERY attractive (Google account login required). As of today the pricing breaks down like this:

20 GB ($5.00 USD per year)
80 GB ($20.00 USD per year)
200 GB ($50.00 USD per year) includes free Eye-Fi card
400 GB ($100.00 USD per year) includes free Eye-Fi card
1 TB ($256.00 USD per year) includes free Eye-Fi card

I'm sold on only $5 a year for a 20GB slice in the cloud. Think about it - that's only $0.42 a month! While I can't quite justify the need for the 80GB package... the cost barrier isn't that high if it becomes a necessity.

Now, the kicker? The storage is shared across all your Google services, for that account: GMail, Google Docs, Picasa, etc... which if you include the free storage you ALREADY get with each - you're gaining approximately another 9.5GB....

Now here is one feature what I envision for this service because I'm CONSTANTLY running up against it: I go to attach a file to an email in GMail, but wait - it's barely over the attachment size limit. No worries because Google recognizes that - offers to upload it to my GDrive instead and auto includes a link to the file in the GMail message. If Google can automate that process for me I'd fly to Mountain View, CA and become Sergey and Larry's personal slave.

by Ben Pike