It’s widely rumored that Google will launch a Dropbox style online storage service this week called Google Drive offering users up to 5GB of free storage space. According to The Verge, concrete evidence has even emerged in Google Docs with a reference to transferring your documents to “Google Drive on the web”. Added to a sudden 5GB increase in the storage space offered to some Google Docs users, it does indeed seem like Google is preparing to take on the likes of Dropbox and Microsoft’s SkyDrive.
Reuters has also reported that Google is willing to offer a whopping 100GB of storage space to paying customers.
The timing is interesting with Microsoft just announcing a reduction in free SkyDrive storage for new users to just 7GB unless they are a current user and specifically opt to keep the 25GB storage limit. There’s also of course the recently released iCloud by Apple to contend with too.
The question is, has Google arrived on the online storage scene too late? Its social networking site Google+ has found it hard to make any serious dent on Facebook although that was an area in which the company had very little experience. Online storage is a different story. Obviously, its less complicated than social networking but also, Google was one of the first to offer high levels of storage for web apps like Gmail, Picasa and Google Docs and thus already has millions of users already using its free and paid storage space options.
