Category: Google Drive

Google Drive for Android has been updated with a feature that many of us who spend more time on their mobiles versus their desktop have wanted:  Trash management.  With the latest version of the app, version 2.3.583.20.30 for those keeping score at home and like playing Google Version Bingo, you now have the ability to view items in your Trash, permanently delete those items or restore them to your Google Drive files.  It is a simple feature but a huge step forward if you accidentally delete a file.  Until this point that mean going to a PC, Mac or Chromebook and going to the Google Drive site.  No more!

In an effort to continue to have users keep their accounts safe and secure, Google is offering anyone who goes through a security checkup 2GB of free Google Drive storage.  The offer is in conjunction with the Safer Internet Initiative which officially is tomorrow.  However, you can take the check up now and get the free Drive storage today.  It is a painless process really and should only take a few minutes to complete.  Once it is done, Google will add the extra storage to your account which will be to your Drive account immediately.

On the Google Apps blog today, Google has announced an improved view of your Recent Files in Google Drive is coming to the website for the service. The update, which will be rolling out over the course of the next 1-3 days for all users, will still be divided into files accessed today, yesterday and so forth but will have more information about how that file was accessed.

While much digital ink has been spilled this week on the changes coming to Microsoft’s OneDrive cloud storage service, there is one element of this announcement that I haven’t seen much discussion on in the course of these writings.  That’s not to say it isn’t out there, just not much of it.  That element is the view that the announcement was nothing short of a victory of Google and the Google Drive service.  It is a victory without them having to “dive to the bottom” on pricing to win.  They simply stayed the course and let Microsoft figure out that giving away unlimited storage is unsustainable.

For those who somehow missed what I’m talking about, earlier this week Microsoft announced big changes coming to OneDrive:

• The Free account goes down from 15GB of storage to 5GB and the 15GB “Camera Roll” bonus (you got it when you sync’d your photos with OneDrive) is eliminated
• Office 365 subscribers now get 1TB of storage, not unlimited
• the 100GB and 200GB storage accounts are going away to for new subscribers (if you have one of these you can keep it) and is replaced with a $1.99/month 50GB account.

These changes fly in the face of the much hyped “unlimited” storage offer that Microsoft made just last year and has angered plenty of people because, until this change, OneDrive was really the best value out there when it came to cloud storage.

That has now changed and Google Drive is certainly looking to be one of the more attractive mainstream cloud storage offers out in the market.

We are currently in the Great Google Disruption of 2015.  Well, okay, that’s a bit of drama but there are several service from the company that are degraded.  The most notable is Google Drive where people are able to log in but they don’t see any files or folders.  Google Docs, Google Sheets and Google Slides are also impacted by the outage which started at 10:55 AM Pacific.  There is no word on what the issue is or when it will be resolved.

For those who want to keep up with such outages or other service impacting things from Google, there is a single site that is the place to go for information:  The App Status Dashboard.

Google is rolling out a new update to the Google Drive for Android app that will add the ability for users to request permission to access a file or folder on your Drive account.  Today you can easily share content on your Drive by sending a link to someone via email, Hangouts, etc.  As Google puts it, “This release adds the ability for people using the Drive Android app to request access to Drive content links―received via email, Hangouts, etc―to which they don’t already have access.”

Google Drive for Android – Free – Download Now