Google Drive and Android app go live

Google Drive is no longer a secret, as the Google Drive Android app is now live in the Play Store and the description gives us a great idea of what to expect.

As expected, Google Drive will be a Dropbox and Box competitor, as you’ll get some free cloud storage space to store your files. The official announcement went live a few hours ago and it offers 5 GB of storage for free. You can also buy additional storage for a fee and this includes 100 GB for $4.99 a month, dramatically cheaper than the competition.

The app’s description also gives us some solid details. This is an evolution of Google Docs, so you can collaborate on the files in your Google Drive account. You can also open up multiple file types (including video) in a browser. Naturally, you’ll also have strong search capabilities including the ability to search through scanned documents with OCR technology.

Keep everything. Share anything. 

*** Google Docs is now a part of Google Drive! ***

* Keep everything. Share anything.
* With Google Drive, you can store all your files in one place, so you can access them from anywhere and share them with others
* Use the Google Drive Android app to access your photos, documents, videos and other files stored on your Google Drive
* Upload files to Google Drive directly from your Android device
* Share any file with your contacts
* Access files others have shared with you on Google Drive
* Make any file available offline so you can access them even when you don’t have an Internet connection
* Create and edit Google documents with rich text formatting
* Edits to your Google documents appear to collaborators in seconds
* Make quick changes to spreadsheets
* View your PDFs, presentations and more
* Upload and convert files to the Google Docs format
* Take a photo of printed text and convert it to a Google document
* Optimized experience to take advantage of larger screens for tablet users, Honeycomb (Android 3.0+)

The Google Drive service is live at drive.google.com and you can download the Android app here. Google also says that an iPhone and iPad version are coming soon.