Comparing Google Drive to other cloud services

Google Drive may have launched with some buzz last week, but it enters an already crowded and competitive market.

Dropbox, Microsoft SkyDrive, formerly Microsoft Windows Live Skydrive, Box, SugarSync, SpiderOak - the list goes on with how many cloud storage platforms exist today, each offering some amount of free storage for storing and accessing files remotely. Just about all of these extend their reach to Web browsers and smartphone and tablet apps, making it possible to access files in a variety of ways or locations.

The two that Google Drive is being compared to the most are Dropbox and Microsoft SkyDrive. Dropbox was arguably the cross-platform app that started this cloud storage trend, while Microsoft SkyDrive also just went through a makeover last week.

As part of that makeover, Microsoft has lowered the free storage limit from 25GB to 7GB, but existing SkyDrive users can keep the original higher limit by logging in and opting for it. Also notable in that change is that Microsoft raised the size limit per file from just 50MB to 2GB, which is great for uploading video. But Microsoft still compresses media files copied over to SkyDrive, so they won’t be of original size and quality, which is not the case with Google Drive or Dropbox.

Drive offers 5GB for free, while Dropbox offers 2GB with incentives to increase that by referring others to the platform. Of the three, Dropbox supports the widest range of devices and operating systems (including Linux), while SkyDrive is the cheapest upgrade at $10 per year for 20GB. Google Drive blends in with Google Docs, making it easy to use, except you lose the option to access files when you’re offline. Dropbox allows for offline access, while SkyDrive does not.

In addition, Google has come under fire for implying in its user agreement that it has the right to reproduce and distribute whatever content you upload to Drive. Whether this is just a way of saying that they will tailor ads based on what you upload is somewhat unclear, but expect to hear more about this as Drive rolls out further.

But for those entrenched in Gmail, Google Docs and other services from the search giant, migrating to Drive will be a pretty seamless process.