Google Drive: Throw Away That Hard Drive!

Google has been all over the news lately, coming off their I/O conference. They introduced a new tablet, media player, and updates to their Android OS. However, there were also some news related to the Google applications that many small businesses use daily.

Google has introduced offline text editing in Google Docs, they are working on offline editing for presentation applications and spreadsheets as well.  This feature enables users to be able to edit documents on the go without a wireless connection, and then the users changes will synch the changes to the cloud when they connect again. These changes are sure to create competition with Microsoft. Google already has 5 million businesses using its current cloud applications.

Additionally, the Google Drive app will be available for iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch this week.

A version for Chrome iOS is also in the works, “Google Drive will operate as the local file system. Users can search through a folder of scanned receipts and find a particular receipt using a keyword search. The receipts are stored as image files, but the Drive application uses optical character recognition to index the text in the receipts,” says, Clay Bavor, director of product management for Google Drive.

Referring to users’ increasing tendency to use multiple devices, Sundar Pichai, Google’s senior vice president of Chrome and apps, said, “It’s not just at home: It’s the same person who leaves home and shows up at work, and they demand the same experience.”

Playing around with Google Drive and Google Docs is really interesting. I was able to edit a Google Document shared with a friend, and able to edit docs in real time. That’s a cool feature being able to watch your document being edited.

Written by IT Support and IT Consulting Professionals at FedSolutions.  Thanks for stopping by!