Review Google Drive in 2022

What exactly is Google Drive?

Google Drive is the file storage and synchronization component that comes with any Google account. If you use Google Workspace, you can consider Drive as part of an entire suite of apps, along with other specific apps like Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, etc. When you create a new Google Doc, it will automatically save to Google Drive.

The online storage you receive is shared between documents you create there or save there, along with Google Photos and Gmail , including email attachments.

In addition to using the service as the default storage for all your Google-related files, you can install the Google Drive desktop client to run locally on your device as a solution. file storage and syncing method, the same way Microsoft OneDrive or Dropbox can. When you set up Google Drive locally, it saves and syncs any files you ask for. If your computer ever experiences data loss (anything from hardware failure to house fire or ransomware), all the files you’ve saved with Google Drive are safe and available for you to access. Access or download from the Google Drive website. That way, if you have to buy a new computer or completely erase and reset your computer, you can get all your files back.

How much does Google Drive cost?

Sign up for a Google account and start using Google Drive at no cost. For free, you get 15GB of space, which is quite generous compared to what you get for free with other hosting services.

If you need more storage, you have to pay for a Google One account. Google One is nothing more than a service pack. In other words, when you become a paying customer for more storage, Google offers a number of additional benefits, such as photo editing tools, mobile VPN services, and discounts on products. Google products.

The Google One Basic plan increases your storage to 100GB and costs $1.99 per month or $19.99 per year. You get the additional photo editing tools we just mentioned in the Google Photos mobile app, as well as phone support and text chat.

The $2.99 ​​a month standard plan (or $29.99 a year) increases storage up to 200GB and you get 3% off the Google Store on Pixel phones, Nest smart home devices and other products.

If you’re interested in VPN service, you need the Premium $9.99 per month (or $99.99 per year) plan, which gives 2TB of storage and increases your in-store discount by 10% .

Higher pricing plans go up to $149.99 per month for 30TB of storage. All plans can be shared among five family members and friends. You get a slight discount if you pay annually instead of monthly for the Basic, Standard, or Premium plan.

Price comparing

For comparison, a Microsoft 365 account that costs $9.99 a month or $99 per year will give you 6 TB of OneDrive storage—1 TB each for six people (versus 2 TB from Google for the same price). Microsoft also gives you installable Office productivity apps, Teams, premium Office templates, Family Safety features, and chat and phone support. A user account is $6.99 per month or $69.99 per year. Free users only get 5GB and use the web versions of Microsoft Office.

Apple device owners familiar with iCloud Drive may know that the free storage allotted there is only 5GB. You can add 50GB of storage for 99 cents per month; 200GB for $2.99 ​​per month; or 2TB for $9.99 per month. The last two options cost about the same as Google One. At any rate, you get a quasi-VPN service that Apple calls Private Relay, but it only works in Safari.

Many other services offer cloud storage and synchronization without turning them into bundled transactions. The IDrive Editors’ Choice winner charges $79.50 per year for 5TB, and the highly rated Dropbox gives you 2TB for $119.88 per year.

Google Drive web interface

The online design of Google Drive has improved over the years and is now more intuitive than ever. It’s easy to change the file view to see thumbnails or lists. Creating folders and subfolders to organize your files is simple. Other ways to organize beyond folders include using color codes and asterisks. One notable convenience is that you can drag and drop files from your computer into any open folder in the browser to upload them.

If you use Google Drive to sync files from other devices, you’ll find them in the left pane under Computer. Google Drive automatically calls them by device name, but you can rename them however you want.

One of the few things that remains clumsy and complicated in web apps is finding ways to free up space in Google Drive by identifying and deleting large and unwanted files, especially those shared with you. . Admittedly, since the launch of Google One, it has gotten so much better. Now, an interface helps you figure out what’s causing memory to be nearly full, and as you drill through it, it pinpoints potential problem areas.

In addition to supporting Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides, Drive can handle Forms, Drawings, Maps, PDFs, image files, etc. You can even integrate third-party Web applications three to work with other file types, such as CAD or music files.

Previously, Google called its desktop client for sync by different names, such as Backup & Sync for consumers and File Streams for business accounts. We mention it for two reasons. First, you may come across those names in old help documents or articles. Second, if you’ve previously installed one of the older versions of the client, you’ll definitely want to remove it and install the new version. That is much better. When you install the new version, it will warn you if you already have the old version installed and ask if you want to get rid of it.

After downloading and installing the desktop client, it will ask you to re-authenticate your account in the web browser. The Google Drive app will then prompt you to give it access to files in various locations, such as your Desktop and Documents folders. Those are fleeting approvals. You haven’t given the app instructions to start backing things up. You can then open the app and indicate which folder on your computer you want to back up.

The old desktop app had a much more confusing setup. Things are clearer now, although if you’ve used other backup and sync apps before, Google Drive is a bit different. With some dedicated backup services, such as SpiderOak One Backup, you select the areas of your computer that you want to back up from the file tree view, and you can select multiple locations at once. With Google Drive, you select individual folders.

So far, we’ve looked at creating and saving files in Google Drive, and syncing and backing up files from the desktop to Drive. But what about syncing files you’ve created  in  Drive (or uploaded to Drive)  with  your computer? We’ll go into that in the next section.

When you sync from Drive to your computer, you have two options for how to do it: streaming and mirroring.

Streaming files means you store all of your My Drive files in the cloud and simply access them from your computer. “My Drive” files here refer to files that you create right in the Google Drive web app or upload there, meaning files that  did not  originate from an external source, such as your computer or phone. friend. With this option, you can also select files and folders to make available offline. Any changes you make to the file will automatically sync. This option is similar to OneDrive’s Files On-Demand feature.

Copying files means that you store all of your My Drive files in the cloud  and  on your computer. All files and folders will be available offline, so you don’t have to select individual files and folders for that. Again, any changes you make to any file will automatically sync elsewhere.

Streaming is the better option if you don’t want to use a lot of local storage on your computer. The only time files take up space on your machine is when you’re working on them and the files you choose to make are available offline.

Mirroring is the better option if you don’t want to mess around with choosing which files will be available offline—but it will take up more space on your computer, possibly a significant amount, depending on how much you have stored in Google Drive.

Powerful Search and OCR in Google Drive

Files you store in Google Drive are highly searchable. One way is through optical character recognition, or OCR. When you save and sync image files and PDF files in Google Drive, the app scans the file for text and makes it searchable. To test, we uploaded the chocolate cake recipe PDF file and made sure that the word “chocolate” was not present in the filename. Seconds after uploading the file, we searched for the word “chocolate” across all of our Google Drive files, and the app found it instantly.

Previously, for Google Drive to read and interpret text on PDFs or images, you had to first open the file in Google Docs, but that’s no longer the case. Now it works almost immediately after you save the file to Google Drive.

Microsoft OneDrive also uses OCR on images and PDF files. It uses AI to tag photos and extract text that you can see in the dashboard of any file.

Security and privacy

As mentioned in other PCMag reviews of Google products and services, Google data centers are highly secure. They are geographically distributed and have completed all relevant SOC checks and met all necessary standards to ensure that your data is safe. Can an attacker steal your password and gain access to the files you store in Drive? Right. However, Google provides you with additional protections to secure your account, such as support for multiple multi-factor authentication options.

Additionally, the company says that data is “encrypted when it’s stored on disk, stored on backup media, or moved between data centers.”

Google’s Privacy Policy(Opens in a new window)is available for you to read and is written in fairly simple language, but it is lengthy, as one might expect.

Google Drive Mobile

Google Drive has mobile apps for all major mobile platforms. They give you access to the latest versions of all your files from your phone or tablet. You can view more than 90 different file types right in the Google Drive app. In some cases, you can edit the file in Google Drive, although often the app will suggest editing in other Google apps, such as Sheets or Docs. However, you can read and add comments to files from the Google Drive mobile app.

Many file storage and syncing apps, such as Dropbox and OneDrive, offer automatic uploading of images and videos that you capture on your phone or tablet. That way, you never have to remember to back them up. The Google Drive app doesn’t have that feature, although the Google Photos app does, so you can download it, but you’ll have to install a separate app.

Another shortcoming is that when you want to take a photo and upload a new photo to the Google Drive app, there is no automatic document scanning option. To do that, you need another mobile app, Google Lens. Other apps, such as Dropbox, include a portable scanner in their upload/camera functionality, so you can scan documents and turn them into PDFs easily and quickly.

In short, if you want all the functionality you can expect from Google Drive on your mobile device, then you have to install additional apps. You  ‘ll  get more functionality and features if you install the Google One mobile app. You can use this app even without a paid Google One account. However, for those who just want to back up their data to Google Drive, it can be confusing to know that you have to know all the names of different products, services, and apps to get what you need.

Despite the multitude of tools and ingenious work, we still want to see more from Google Drive. For example, the multimedia features are not all powerful. There are no tools to disinfect photos, except by keeping an eye on them. (OneDrive has a similar problem.) Adding a mobile scanner to the camera feature in the mobile app seems like an easy thing to do.

Also, when you share files and folders from Google Drive, the options are limited. You have fine control over making files public to anyone with the link, or restricting access to designated people, and determining if someone has read-only or edit privileges. or not, but you can’t add a password to a shared file or set an expiration date when the shared link expires. Box, Dropbox, and other apps offer more options when you’re sharing files, although in some cases you’ll need a premium account to get all those features.

One potential concern about Google Drive is privacy. Google collects information from your online activity to serve you targeted advertisements. Microsoft states that they don’t do this, but if privacy is paramount to you, we recommend using a file-syncing service that puts anonymity first. Resilio Sync (formerly BitTorrent Sync) keeps your data out of the cloud, using direct P2P connections instead.

Some online backup services allow you to choose an encryption key in your possession, so that even company employees can’t decrypt your files. These include SpiderOak OneBackup (emphasis on privacy) and SOS Online Backup. Just be careful not to lose your encryption password, or your data will be gone forever.

If you have a Google account, take advantage of Google Drive, especially when combined with other Workspace apps. Plus, take the time to learn some secrets to getting the most out of Google Drive. The biggest advantage is that you get a lot of free storage. The Editor’s other pick in the category, OneDrive, is also well worth your consideration. OneDrive beats Google Drive’s PCMag rating a bit thanks to Files On-Demand, more powerful productivity apps (Office is hard to beat), and better sharing options.