Google launched their Drive cloud storage service last week. We all expected that to be coming. There had been speculations about it for a long time. We’re all a little surprised that Google came onboard so late. With Google Drive, you get a generous 5 GB of cloud storage free of charge. At the same time, Google also announced upgrading of the free Gmail storage, which is separate from Drive, from 7 GB to 10 GB.
Wonderful. There are now several main cloud storage providers. Some are designed for specific purposes, like Flickr for photos. Others are truly “hard disks in the cloud”, and you can use them to store any thing you like. The ones that come immediately to mind are Microsoft SkyDrive, Dropbox, and Google Drive. All three offer a free-tier of storage at no cost, and all provide paid options to upgrade storage capacity.
Google Drive was a little late coming to the cloud storage party. That’s probably because they were working to differentiate themselves. Google has integrated Drive with Docs, the latter being their web-based office suite. So, Google Drive is not just simply a cloud-based storage service, but also offers cloud-based creation and editing of office documents, presentations and spreadsheets. This is where it clearly has the upper hand over any other cloud storage solutions, including SkyDrive and Dropbox.
On the basic level, all three solutions offer the same storage synchronization feature. You designate a folder on your computer for synchronization to the cloud. Everything you put in this folder gets sent to the cloud. Changes you make to files in this folder is sent to the cloud. Anything that changes in the cloud is downloaded back to this folder. If that’s all that you do, then at the very least what you’ve got is a cloud-based backup of your folder.
But the true benefit of cloud storage is when you use multiple computers, and all of them have a designated folder setup to synchronize with the cloud storage. Then, whatever changes you make on one computer will get propagated to all other computers. A common use for this is to have your office computer and home computer synchronized, so that all your files are available on both of them.
If you’re not willing to pay for your cloud storage, the free-tier service from the three providers offers you the following storage capacity:
| Google Drive | Microsoft SkyDrive | Dropbox | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free Capacity | 5 GB | 7 GB (25 GB for old accounts) | 2 GB (up to 18 GB at 500 MB per referral) |
If the above is not enough, how much does it cost to upgrade your storage capacity? Oh, for the nitty gritty details, you’re best off going to the individual service providers to compare plans. But just for sake of comparison, let me put up a table for 25 GB and 100 GB capacity points:
| Google Drive | Microsoft SkyDrive | Dropbox | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 25 GB | $2.49/month or $29.88/year | $10/year (for additional 20 GB, for total of 27 GB or 45 GB depending on what you got on your free-tier) | $9.99/month or $99/year for 50 GB (+1 GB per referral up to 32 GB) |
| 100 GB | $4.99/month or $59.88/year | $50/year (for additional 100 GB, for total of 107 GB or 125 GB depending on what you got on your free-tier) | $19.99/moth or $199/year (+1 GB per referral up to 32GB) |
So, it seems, Microsoft offers the cheapest cloud storage service. That’s assuming you don’t need all the features that Google Drive offers (i.e. the web-based office suite). Oh, for Apple users, there’s also iCloud to consider. But it’s not cheap ($40/year for 20 GB, and $100/year for 50 GB).
All prices above are in US$.
Of course, another thing to consider is the speed at which your cloud storage can be accessed. I’ve not really tested Microsoft SkyDrive, but it looks like Google Drive is a lot faster than Dropbox.
What cloud storage will you choose?