Google Drive released! 5GB for free, 100GB/$5pm

Google has just released the long awaited storage in the cloud and syncing solution, Google Drive. Your Google Drive is essentially your storage area for anything Google (sans YouTube). Gmail, Docs, Picasa and file syncing (basically online backup).

Today Google are launching clients for PC, Mac and Android with iOS support coming soon. Your files and files shared with you are also available via the web, which Google advises you use Chrome for.

Additional storage can be purchased at $2.49/m for 25GB and 100GB for $4.99/m. If your storage needs demand and budget allows, you can pay up to $800/m for 16TB of storage. While this top tier sounds like a lot, its actually dropped by hundreds of dollars from what it cost a few hours ago. Also no other provide is offering that sized storage in the cloud.

Once enabled, Google Drive shows up in the top black bar, letting you know how important this is to Google. While most online storage comes with a very restrictive file size limit, Google Drive will let you upload, store and share videos. It’ll be interesting to see if this becomes a source for podcast storage.

After installing the desktop client, a new folder ‘Google Drive’ will be added to your My Docs folder. It’s then apparent just how small Google docs files are, as they synced to that folder almost instantaneously. When it comes to document storage, Google Drive will maintain previous versions of files up to 30 days or 100 revisions.

As usual, Google have provided a launch video for their new service.

More info @ http://drive.google.com/start