Google Offers 5GB of Free Online Storage with Google Drive

At long last Google has introduced its online storage and syncing service, Google Drive. With it, you can store your documents, photos, videos, PDFs, spreadsheets, and other items on Google's servers--similar to other online syncing services like Dropbox and SugarSync. So what makes this online drive different, other than being backed by the big search giant?

There are many similarities between Google Drive and Dropbox, SugarSync, SkyDrive, and competing online storage services. Like SugarSync, Google Drive starts you off with 5GB of free storage space--more than Dropbox's 2GB of free space, but less than SkyDrive's now 7GB of free space (formerly 25GB).

All have desktop apps, webapps, and mobile apps, though Google Drive, just released today is still working on an iOS version.

Google Drive has some unique features, particularly:

Optical Character Recognition (OCR) -- so you can search scanned documents for textIntegration with Google Docs and Google+, so you'll be able to attach photos from Drive to Google+ and collaborate with others in Drive; in the future you'll be able to move things from Drive to GmailGoogle promises other 3rd party app capabilities like sending faxes, editing videos and more from within Drive

If 5GB of storage isn't enough, pricing is competitive compared to Dropbox: $2.49/month for 25GB, $4.99/month for 100GB, or $49.99/month for 1TB. Upgrading to a paid account will also increase Gmail storage.

Deciding whether or not to go with Google Drive or Dropbox or SugarSync or another online syncing service would depend on what kind of docs you use most, how much storage you need, and the features you want. Microsoft's SkyDrive, for example, might be best for Office users because it works great with Office Web Apps. SugarSync has a lot of advantages on the mobile side. Dropbox still offers more third-party integration and ways to get free space.

Of course, there's no reason you can't use more than one cloud storage and syncing service--and have lots of free space to store your files. If you have a preference for one or the other, though, let us know why in the comments.

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