Google has finally taken the lid off of the long-rumored Google Drive, giving you another option for stashing your stuff in the cloud. But what is it, exactly?
The Dropbox-dominated cloud storage space has become increasingly crowded. Microsoft’s SkyDrive, Apple’s iCloud, Evernote, and Box are all contending for your content. But Google Drive might just stand out from the pack.

Google Drive is a cloud storage service

Essentially, it’s a beefed-up version of Google Docs. You can store your documents, photos, music, videos, etc. all in one place. It syncs with your mobile devices and your computer, so if you make a change from one gadget, it will automatically show up if you were to access it elsewhere.

It tracks your changes too, so if you make an edit to the document and hit save, you can still look back at all your revisions from the past 30 days. Of course it relies heavily on Google search, with image recognition for browsing your photos and some OCR capabilities for sniffing out text in pictures.

It will offer both free and premium options

You can get up to 5GB of space for free, after which you can upgrade. It’s $2.49/month for 25GB, $4.99/month for 100GB, and $49.99 a month for a whopping 1TB. If you move to a premium account it also automatically expands your Gmail storage to 25GB.

Integrate with Gmail and third-party apps

You’ll be able to open things you saved in Google Drive using other service; it can handle more than 30 different types of files, including Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop and HD video, and you don’t even have to have those programs installed on your computer. So for example, if you squirreled away a music file, you could listen to it later on whatever player you please. Drive also pretty much does away with email attachments, which makes sharing a lot easier. If you wanted to show a friend a video of your vacation, you could just pass them a link to that file, rather than adding it to a clunky message. You wouldn’t have to upload it to a message and your friend wouldn’t have to wait around to download a big file.

It’s not exclusive to Android

Though Apple’s iCloud only caters to iOS users, the Google counterpart is open to all platforms. It’s easily accessible from a wide variety of devices, like Android tablets and phones, as well as the iPad and the iPhone (though only through a web browser at the moment). An app for Android dropped today, and an iOS version is coming in the next few weeks. You can also download Drive for your Mac or PC.

It will present a big challenge to Dropbox.

With 45 million users, Dropbox has been the leader when it comes to cloud storage. However, it only gives you 2GB for free, and chances are you already subscribe to one, if not more, of Google’s services. So when people are deciding on a destination for their data, they’ll turn to Drive by default, rather than signing up for an outside service, especially if they’re one of the millions already using Gmail, for example. And for most people, 5GB is pretty sufficient, meaning they’re going to stick with Google.

While there are already a number of applications in the market which help businesses run their data online, the overhead and headache of spreading data across multiple service comes with a price.

Skylight takes business productivity to another level by enabling businesses to work across multiple productivity applications on one platform. Skylight lives entirely in the cloud, so data is accessible securely from anywhere in the world at any time.

Since the launch of its first beta, Skylight has developed a number of key features including for example:

Project management & real-time collaboration

• People & tasks management
• Document, spreadsheet and multimedia file sharing
• Time tracking & invoicing
• Contact management
• Dashboard and widgets
• Scheduling and budgeting
• Messages
• Advanced filtering
• Advanced tagging

Check it out here: http://skylightit.com

Request an invitation for free

NOT SO FAST! First, Bing has launched an aggressive marketing campaign that is largely responsible for people jumping over – many of whom come back to Google. Second, Microsoft and Facebook announced a partnership in October of 2010, bringing “LIKE” data and profile search to Bing. This partnership is largely responsible for this growth. I wonder how many Facebook users know that they are using Bing.

If anything, this story reiterates our mantra that in order to succeed today, you need a well rounded marketing plan that includes Google and Social Networking Mediums; especially Facebook. With the billionaires who control the internet constantly jockeying for position, we encourage you to stay protected through diversity. Balance your optimization, paid marketing efforts and social media marketing so if there is a major change in algorithms or rules, you don’t suffer for it!

Why Operation Web?

Some companies Design Websites, some offer Social Media Solutions and some specialize in Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Who does a small business owner turn to for all of these needs? The answer is a company who can competently perform all aspects of web development – Operation Web!

We know firsthand how frustrating it can be to pieces together your web marketing needs. We make it simple. Come to us and we will apply Design, SEO and Social Networking elements that will maximize your businesses exposure on the web. And, we pride ourselves on providing the best service, quality and pricing in Southern California!

Why a Blog?

As stated earlier, our objective is to help you prosper! We love the idea that we can give away information that can help businesses in our Community succeed. It is not only our pleasure, it is our obligation! Some things are more important than money. We know that what we give to you will come back 100 fold! So if you are reading this, thanks for stopping bye. Feel free to comment, subscribe and LIKE if you feel compelled to. God Bless and have a prosperous day!

The Operation Web Team