Google Drive goes live [Video]

Seth Weintraub | Apr 24 2012 - 9:29 am PT

After what felt like years of speculation, Google finally released its Google Drive product. The rumors were true: 5GB, Mac and PC apps, collaboration and editing, OCR, and —of course —a hefty search. Google also released an Android Google Drive app that allows you to access the service directly from your mobile device.

Create and collaborate. Google Docs is built right into Google Drive, so you can work with others in real time on documents, spreadsheets and presentations. Once you choose to share content with others, you can add and reply to comments on anything (PDF, image, video file, etc.) and receive notifications when other people comment on shared items.
Store everything safely and access it anywhere (especially while on the go). All your stuff is just… there. You can access your stuff from anywhere—on the web, in your home, at the office, while running errands and from all of your devices. You can install Drive on your Mac or PC and can download the Drive app to your Android phone or tablet. We’re also working hard on a Drive app for your iOS devices. And regardless of platform, blind users can access Drive with a screen reader.
Search everything. Search by keyword and filter by file type, owner and more. Drive can even recognize text in scanned documents using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology. Let’s say you upload a scanned image of an old newspaper clipping. You can search for a word from the text of the actual article. We also use image recognition so that if you drag and drop photos from your Grand Canyon trip into Drive, you can later search for [grand canyon] and photos of its gorges should pop up. This technology is still in its early stages, and we expect it to get better over time.

As for pricing, Walt Mossberg at The Wall Street Journal did some digging and discovered additional storage is significantly cheaper than alternatives such as Dropbox and SugarSync:

Prices for additional storage drastically undercut Dropbox and SugarSync. For instance, 100 GB on Google Drive costs $4.99 a month. By contrast, 100 GB costs $14.99 monthly on SugarSync and $19.99 on Dropbox. Google Drive will offer huge capacities, in tiers, all the way up to 16 terabytes. (A terabyte is roughly 1,000 gigabytes.) And if you buy extra storage for Google Drive, your Gmail quota rises to 25 GB