Understanding the Differences between Google Drive and Dropbox

While perusing the headlines and posts detailing the
release of Google Drive, Google's cloud-based storage service, many compare the
service and another popular cloud storage service, Dropbox. Google drive
"will present a big threat to dropbox" writes Gizmodo's
Leslie Horn contradicting The Next Web's headline "Don't Call it a Dropbox Killer." All
that death talk is just punditry. Cloud storage technology probably can't kill,
anyway. But, Drive provides an alternative, even providing some things Dropbox
does not. For those looking to maybe switch over or get into the cloud storage
game, we've broken down the key differences between the two services:

BASIC
FUNCTIONALITY

Dropbox: From the Dropbox site:
"Dropbox is a free service that lets you bring your photos, docs, and
videos anywhere and share them easily.” And that's basically it, as the video
on the site explains. The service allows users to store stuff on the cloud (ie.
the interwebs) meaning access anywhere. Also, the service provides easy sharing
between Dropboxers. 

Google Drive: Same idea, Google
Drive allows users to store their stuff in the cloud, meaning
they can get it anywhere and share it with other Google Drive users across the
Internet. A big bonus of a service like this is it allows for sharing of a lot
of stuff a lot easier than email. From the Google promotional
video:"Forget files being too big to e-mail." Dropbox works like
that, too, of course. But coming from our email service, it sounds nicer. 

SERVICE DRAWS

Dropbox: 45 million people already use Dropbox. It's already
available on smartphones. Inertia's a good enough reason not to
migrate. Also, these are the types of services that have more value the
more people use them. If all of one's friends are Dropboxing things, it makes
the service more valuable for that person. 45 million friends are already using
Dropbox, why be the lone migrant?

Google Drive: Drive's available on all the same platforms as
Dropbox, besides iOS, which we hear is coming soon. And, for Google users,
which, despite Google's despotism of late, a lot of us are, Google Drive will
fit right into our Google lives. That makes it more than storage and sharing
tool. For example, one can edit documents using Google Docs, while sharing
those documents in Google Drive. Though, as AllThingsD's Walt Mossberg notes,
this editing thing only works for Google Docs, documents. "If your stored
document is in a Microsoft Office format, you can only view it. To edit it, you
have to click a command to convert the file to Google’s own formats, or choose
a setting that converts Microsoft Office files when uploaded. But this latter
feature only works when uploading from the website,"
he writes. (This is clearly part of
Google's super-integration Internet domination plans.) There's also a bit of
that Google Search magic we love too much in there, allowing users to search
and filter stored stuff. Though, Google warns this tech is still in
development. 

LOOK

Dropbox: The service isn't exactly intuitive. But, we're used
to it at this point.

Google Drive: It looks like Google Docs, something we're already
used to. And, again, that integration is nice, as LifeHacker's
Whitson Gordon explains. "What's really cools is that
drive will automatically use optical character recognition (OCR) to read your
scanned PDFs and other files, so that you can search for text within those
files, even if they're just scanned images. It'll also use Google Images to
scan your images, so that searching for, say, "Eiffel Tower", will
bring up your photo of the Eiffel Tower you took last summer," he
notes. 

We can't say if
all that makes Drive the type of ferocious beast that will finish the
competition. But, for those who haven't taken the cloud storage leap, looks
like starting out on Drive makes more sense than opening a brand-new Dropbox
account.