Google Drive

Recently, some lucky Google users received an invitation to Google Drive (free to $4.99 per month). If you haven't yet been invited to Drive, relax because you actually have most of the product and service already. It's called Google Docs, and it's fantastic.

Confused? The newly launched Google Drive is merely a rebranding of Google Docs with a few added features, chief among them local file syncing. In other words, Google Docs?ahem, Drive?now works more like Dropbox , SugarSync, CX, or any other file-syncing service you care to name, while still retaining the core Docs functionality, too. You can upload files to your Google account, convert them to Google's file format to edit them online or create new docs in the Web interface, collaborate with others in real time, and export the finished products to more standard file formats, like .doc, .rtf, .pdf, .csv, and so on.

Because of these wide-ranging capabilities, Google Drive is an Editors' Choice, although there isn't any one product or service that directly competes with it at the moment. No other file-syncing service includes a free online office suite, and no office suite includes seamlessly integrated cloud-based file-syncing. While Google has positioned its new Google Drive cloud-storage service as one that straddles the consumer and business space, those using it for collaboration will probably get the most out of it. We have no hesitation recommending Google Drive, as it is an excellent platform and service, but that doesn't mean it's the only file-syncing service you should use either.

Main Features of Drive
The gist of Google Drive, and the main attraction to it, is it can store your files in the cloud where they are accessible to you and your collaborators, and become highly searchable.

One feature related to "search" stands out: Google's ability to scan a photo and "read" it using optical character recognition, or identify it using its own technology. The only other app of this kind that uses built-in OCR nearly as well is Evernote , although you have to have a paid Premium account to use it.

Google also claims Drive allows videos to be uploaded, but we encountered some issues with that part of the service.

Like many other general file-syncing services, Google Drive works better for document files than multimedia. It's not ideally meant to be a music and video streaming service?for that kind of product, you'll likely need a paid service and device, such as the Verbatim Mediashare Mini, although SugarSync does offer some neat capabilities and support for streaming iTunes music. Amazon Cloud also offers some special support for music and movies. However, within the Google universe you can use Google Play in tandem with Drive (more on that in a bit).

The toughest criticism Google Drive has faced so far amount of concerns over privacy and IP ownership. My feeling on the topic is this: If you are comfortable using Gmail, you should be comfortable with Google Doc. If you are skeptical of Google's user agreements, don't use Google products. For more in-depth analysis, see "Google Drive's Terms of Use: Lazy People Should Worry."

Carryover Features from Google Docs
The core services and functionality that were in Google Docs, namely, a free online office suite where files are also hosted, are still intact in Drive. Google Docs is one of the best known free alternative to Microsoft Office, although it's entirely Web-based?there's no software to install to use it (the only downloadable part is the app for local syncing with Drive).

As with Microsoft Office, Google Docs/Drive (the old name still shows up if you haven't signed up for Drive yet) lets you create word processing documents, spreadsheets, presentation documents, forms, vector drawings, and now in beta, tables. Google hosts your files, too, so when you log in, all your files are there. You can sort them into customizable folders, which appear along a left pane, or just search for what you need, using a standard search bar in the Web app.

When you create a document in Google Docs (or Drive as it were), the file format used is Google's own. However, the system couldn't be more flexible. You can export Google documents to more standardized files formats, like .doc, .rtf, .ppt, .pdf, and more; and you can import practically any document with the option of keeping it in its native format (which may limit your ability to edit it) or translating it into a Google doc file, which makes it editable in the online service. I've certainly had my share of moments when I was stuck on a computer that didn't have Microsoft Office at the very moment someone emailed me an important file that required my feedback pronto. Google Docs saved the day. I could open the file in Google Docs/Drive, edit it, and export the revised file back out to its original form. Occasionally some formatting will go haywire during this process (bullet points, the bane of my formatting existence!) but it gets the job done.

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