Google Drive and Google Chrome for iOS was announced during the second day of the Google I/O conference. While the iOS counterparts of these two apps can’t match the features and usability of its Android versions, they can be seen as Google’s strategy to get as many people on their services as possible.
There are many iOS users that love and use Google’s services and products so naturally, Google had to release these apps on Apple’s platform as well. Google Drive has some serious competition in the cloud storage space from the likes of Dropbox, Box, and Apple’s own iCloud (check out our post on Google Drive vs Everyone Else).
So can Google Drive be compelling enough on iOS for users to leave their current cloud service and app? Let’s find out.
When you first launch Google Drive, the interface will be familiar immediately if you’ve used it on Android. There are the same sections to view all, starred, recent, and offline files. There’s also a nice search bar at the top that gives the user a faster way to locate files. Dive a little deeper and you’ll find options to share, modify permissions, and open the current file or document in another application.
One of the biggest disappointments for Google Drive on iOS is its inability to edit documents within the application. You will have to open the document in another application like Apple’s own iWork apps, in order to make changes. Continuing the theme of disappointments, there is currently no way for users to even manage their files within the application. Users cannot move the files between folders.
As you can probably already tell, no, Google Drive for iOS will not replace your favorite document editor but it will do just fine as a document viewer. Google is working hard to include more functionality with it’s iOS apps, but this first release of Google Drive is definitely a disappointment.
Google Drive for iOS really doesn’t do anything to put it above the competition and if users are already invested in another cloud service, there really isn’t a compelling reason to do so, at least not on the mobile side of things. Google Drive as a web service is still an amazing collaboration tool. It’s just too bad Google didn’t include any collaboration tools in this version. Maybe we’ll see it in the next release of Google Drive for iOS.
