It's been a busy couple of weeks for the people over at Google. Not only have they just introduced a new product, Google Drive, but they have also increased the amount of free storage offered to their Gmail customers.
Previously, Gmail users have been able to use up to 7.5GB of storage for free, but now, they number will be raised to 10GB. Of course, that number will still increase over time as the ticker will still keep rolling. The increase will be rolled out over the next couple of days, as the tickers will roll forward faster until it reaches the 10GB mark.
Along with this change, Google plans to link Gmail storage to it's new Google Drive. Right now, Google Drive is limited to 5GB for free users, with the option to pay for additional storage capacity. If a Gmail user goes over the new 10GB mark, they can borrow storage space from Google Drive.
Google Drive is a cloud storage product, giving each user a free 5GB cloud drive to store documents, videos, photos and more. One of the neat things about the service is that, like Google Docs, you can share content with others, receive comments and work with others in real time. In real world applications, this product would make it easier to work collaboratively with people from anywhere, in the same way you already can with Google Docs.
As you would imagine, the Google Drive is fully searchable and it also can recognize text in scanned documents, making those easy to search by keyword as well. The idea behind the product is to make the Drive work seamlessly with all of the other Google services. For example, if you have photos in your Drive, you can email them or post them on Google + directly from the Drive.
Although the 5GB limit will make it tough for some, users can upgrade to 25GB of space for $2.49 a month, 100GB for $4.99 a month, or 1 TB for $49.99 a month. The Drive can be accessed from anywhere and is currently available for PC, Mac, Android and there are plans to release an app for iPhone and iPad as well.
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