Developing

Discover Yahoo! With Your Friends

Explore news, videos, and much more based on what your friends are reading and watching. Publish your own activity and retain full control.

To get started, first

YOUR FRIENDS' ACTIVITY

    Google Drive coming to take on Dropbox and iCloud

    Google is all set to launch a cloud based storage solution to rival the likes of Dropbox and Apple's iCloud.

    That's according to a report in the Wall Street Journal, which cites our old pals "people familiar with the matter" as having knowledge of the platform.

    "Like Dropbox, Google's storage service, called Drive, is a response to the growth of Internet-connected mobile devices like smartphones and tablets and the rise of cloud computing, or storing files online so that they can be retrieved from multiple devices," states the report.

    Google's Drive, or G-Drive has been a long running rumour but with the success of Dropbox  - worth between $1 billion and $2 billion and with more than 50 million users - the timing for a launch is nigh.

    With the ubiquitous array of Android mobile devices, both tablets and smartphones, and the huge Google community (through Gmail, Google+, YouTube and the rest), the Mountain View client would have no issues building a user-base, although attracting them away from the likes of Dropbox may be tricky.

    But, with the report suggesting Google may offer a more generous freemium model than Dropbox (which offers 2GB as the standard free allowance), backed by Gmail-style ads, and a cheaper premium model it may have a chance.

    Google is keeping tight-lipped so far, but with Gmail and Google Docs already making use of the Google "cloud", a virtual drive isn't exactly a massive step for the search giant.




    © copyright Pocket-lint 2012

     

    1 comment

    • FC360  •  London, England  •  3 months ago
      I thought Google already has a cloud service? My favourites, contacts etc are already stored on my google account and get synced between my computers and phone. They have a service called google documents which as well as being able to open and edit documents you can also store other files on it. What will be the difference between drive and the current cloud service google have?