Categories: Apps: Internet & Networks

Google Drive: Get Free Access To Files Anywhere

Google Drive is a file storage service. This service enables user cloud storage, file sharing, and collaborative editing. Drive is the home of Google Docs, Sheets and Slides, an office suite of productivity applications. Files shared publicly on Google Drive can be searched with web search engines.

For Google Drive to synchronize files between the user’s computer and Google Drive storage, the Google Drive software must be running on the user’s computer. Google Drive is available for PCs running Windows, Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) or higher, Android smartphones and tablets with Android 2.1 (Eclair) or higher, iPhones, and iPads with iOS 5.0 or higher. Google Drive can be accessed offline on the Google Chrome browser via a Chrome app. Documents can also be viewed and edited offline through standalone Chrome apps. The Google Drive app for Android and iOS supports offline viewing of all file types. Offline editing for documents and spreadsheets is supported through standalone mobile apps.

Google offers an initial 15 GB of online storage space, that is shared across three of its most-used services: Google Drive, Gmail, and Google+ Photos (Picasa Web Albums). However, users can upgrade their free account through a paid subscription plan to get additional storage. Files using Google Docs formats, such as .gdoc, .gslides, and .gsheet do not count towards this quota, as well as photos with a resolution of less than 2048 x 2048 pixels, and videos shorter than 15 minutes. Uploaded files in Microsoft Office and OpenDocument formats can be converted to Google native formats, and can then be stored without using the storage quota at all.

Google Drive incorporates a system of file sharing in which the creator of a file is the owner who can regulate the public visibility of the file or folder. This ownership is transferable.

All files or folders can be shared privately with users that have a Google account, but sharing files with users that do not have a Google account requires making them accessible to “anybody with the link”. This operation generates a secret URL for the file, which may be shared. Files and folders can also be made “public on the web”, which means that they can be indexed by search engines and can then be found and accessed by anyone. The owner may also set one of three access levels for regulating permissions, that’s “can edit”, “can comment” and “can view”.