Today Google announced Google Drive, a place where you can create, share, collaborate, and keep all of your stuff safe in the cloud. The G-Drive will bring together folder syncing technology similar to Dropbox together with Google Docs. You can upload and access all of your files, including videos, photos, Google Docs, PDFs and beyond with over 30 recognized file types (Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator Support).

With Google Drive, you can:

  • Create and collaborate: Google Docs is built right into Google Drive, so you can work with others in real time on documents, spreadsheets and presentations. Once you choose to share content with others, you can add and reply to comments on anything (PDF, image, video file, etc.) and receive notifications when other people comment on shared items.
  • On-The-Go Secure Access: Access your files from anywhere—on the web from all of your devices. You can install Drive on your Mac or PC and can download the Drive app to your Android phone or tablet. There is also a Drive app for your iOS under development.
  • Smart Search: Search by keyword and filter by file type, owner and more. Drive can even recognize text in scanned documents using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology. Let’s say you upload a scanned image of an old newspaper clipping. You can search for a word from the text of the actual article. We also use image recognition so that if you drag and drop photos from your Grand Canyon trip into Drive, you can later search for [grand canyon] and photos of its gorges should pop up. This technology is still in its early stages, and we expect it to get better over time.

5GB of storage is free. You can choose to upgrade to 25GB for $2.49/month, 100GB for $4.99/month or even 1TB for $49.99/month. When you upgrade to a paid account, your Gmail account storage will also expand to 25GB. Google Drive is not avaliable yet for Google Apps users, but will be soon.

Drive is built to work seamlessly with your overall Google experience. You can attach photos from Drive to posts in Google+, and soon you’ll be able to attach stuff from Drive directly to emails in Gmail. Get started with Drive today at drive.google.com/