Google unveils plan for online storage service

Google is hoping to construct the world's largest digital filing cabinet within the latest deepen people's dependence on its services.

The web search leader began its pursuit of the audacious goal yesterday with the much-anticipated debut of Google Drive, a product that stores personal documents, photos, videos and quite a lot of other digital content on Google's computers.

By keeping files in huge data centres, users would be ready to call up the info on their smartphones, tablet computers, laptops and with regards to another internet-connected device. Content can be more easily shared among friends, family and co-workers by sending links to the data rather than emailing large attachments.

Google Drive is offering the primary five gigabytes of storage per account without cost. Additional storage could be sold for prices starting at US$2.49 ($3.07) a month for 25 gigabytes, as much as US$49.99 a month for one terabyte, akin to five laptops with 200-gigabyte drives.

The service is initially available for installation on Windows-based computers, Mac computers, laptops running on Google's Chrome operating system and smartphones powered by Google's Android software.

A version compatible with Apple's hot-selling iPhone and iPad is due in several weeks.

It can be several weeks before Google Drive is obtainable worldwide.

Offering online storage is a part of a technological shift faraway from storing personal files on a single machine in a house or office to entrusting them to computing hubs accessible nearly any time anyplace with internet access. The theorem has become popularly is called "cloud computing".

For all its technological know-how, Google is a late arrival in what's shaping into the internet's version of storage wars. Other combatants with a head start include two other technology heavyweights, Apple and Microsoft, and pioneering startups corresponding to Dropbox and Box.

Google is hoping to further differentiate its storage service by equipping it with less difficult and robust tools. Google Drive will draw upon the company's expertise in internet technology for text and pictures to allow you to find data quickly. Additionally it is optical character recognition which can lookup specific words in scanned newspapers or other sources.

Google is entering the fray five years after word first leaked out that the corporate was developing a web file storage service, then called Gdrive. It never came to fruition.

But Google still has a lot of time and, more importantly, a lot of firepower to topple the contest, says Gartner analyst Michael Gartenberg.

"This puts Google into the guts of the battle," he said. "We're entering this period where the non-public cloud goes to be more important than the private computer, as a way to remain relevant Google needed a service like this."

It marks Google's second foray into online storage. Following Apple's lead, Google last November opened a music store that included free storage for as much as 20,000 songs per user.

Google Drive is starting out by undercutting the five-year-old Dropbox, which has emerged as an early leader in online storage by attracting greater than 50 million users who collectively sync about 1 billion files every two days.

Dropbox offers only 2 gigabytes of free storage, below half Google Drive, and sells 100 gigabytes for US$20 a month or US$200 annually.

Google Drive will charge just US$5 per thirty days, or US$60 annually, for 100 gigabytes of storage.

Apple's iCloud service, designed for owners of its mobile devices and computers, also offers 5 gigabytes of free storage and costs US$100 annually for fifty gigabytes of storage. Microsoft's SkyDrive offers 7 gigabytes to twenty-five gigabytes of free storage, counting on when the user signed up. In a move that might were driven by Google Drive, Microsoft announced this week that SkyDrive would sell 100 gigabytes of storage for US$50 annually.

Dropbox indicated it's reckoning on its unwavering discuss online storage to fend off Google, which has diversified from internet search into email, photo sharing, social networking, online video and smartphones.

"Companies of all configurations and dimensions have tossed of their hats through the years, but we've stayed ahead by building the absolute best experience and creating a product that millions of folks love," Dropbox said.

Dropbox, started in 2007 by two graduates from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is backed by US$257 million in venture capital. Reports yesterday put Google's operating cash flow at US$15 billion.

But Google's deep pockets haven't always been enough for the corporate to beat the early lead of smaller companies that carved out new niches on the web.

It hasn't been capable of build an internet social network to surpass Facebook, despite years of trying.

But Google has the good thing about having the ability to dangle the storage service in front the greater than a thousand million those who already use its internet search engine or other popular products that come with Gmail, its YouTube video site, online software suite Google Docs, social networking service Google Plus and smartphones running on Android.

If Google Drive takes to the air, the corporate becomes a much bigger custodian of sensitive data. Privacy watchdogs fear Google already knows an excessive amount of, but Gartenberg doubts those concerns will undermine Google Drive.

- AP