Anywhere, anytime , on any machine. The world’s top technology companies promise you the moon, and all that they except you to do this to rise up to the clouds to get it. They are giving you services that will keep your data safe and make it accessible, provided you have internet or data connectivity, of course.Google launched the much-anticipated google drive recently and users now access it for storing their files. Basically, it is an online locker where you can store files so that you can access them later or share them with others.

All that you have to do is install a small application, and once you have it, you can synchronize the cloud storage with the hard drive on your  PC, or on the other device.

 

Cloud computing

 We know that many computer users have computers at their houses as well as offices. They may even have smart phones. Often the files that the save on one computer are not accessible on the other one, unless they physically transfer their files, normally using flash or pen drives. This is where cloud computing comes in. it is basically a service that delivers computing requirements to end-recipients through the internet. These services could be strong or even using software that is not on your computer, but one that you have access to through the net. We will focus on the storage aspect in the article.

 

Other Alternatives

 Long before GDrive came on the scene, the cloud was a crowded place. Box,dropbox and microsoft’s live driver, which has now become skydrive, all had made a place for themselves, as did many other cloud-storage services.

Dropbox dominates the cloud storage market right now. It offers 2GB of online storage for free, as compared with 5GB for google drive and 7GB for sky drive. Dropbox is compatibale with practically all popular mobile and desktop platforms, which is a huge advantage, right now. Sky drive is Microsoft;s answer to GDrive. It preceded GDrive by many years and its recent re-launch has brought traditional rivalry to the fore.

 

Online office

 Both google and Microsoft have online office suits that they seek to promote through their cloud storage offerings. Sky drive favours Microsoft office file formats and, thus, editing a word document on the go, is a snap. On the other hand, GDrive is deeply integrated with google’s own office suit, google docs, to an extent that it seems like an extension of google docs. The downside to this is that your files has to be converted to the docs format if you want to edit them. However, you can import these files in a variety of formats, and 450 new fonts and 60 templates have just been added.

Google is already the most preffered search engine. It has a popular e-mail search engine. It is perfectly poised to take the advantage of the fact that many google users simply donot want to leave the google universe, and appreciate the tight integration that comes by being on the platform.

Dropbox advantage

 As we have noted, the big giant on the cloud is an old timer, dropbox. It scores with its simple, uncluttered style, and has added new features with which you can upload share photos online, even as you take them from your smartphone.

As cloud storage becomes more popular, we will have more features from the variety of companies.  We have just discussed the three, there are many. The online world is getting better, and you have nothing to lose but the shackels of your PC that you trade in for the cloud that will put you data at your fingertips, no matter where you are.