Google
Docs App for Android is now Google Drive, rebranding the existing app into a
cloud storage service. In addition to accessing your Google documents and
syncing them up with the cloud, the new app allows you to upload and share files
of any type using your Google Drive.
The
user interface is similar to the Web experience for Google Docs and has all the
functionality of the Google Docs Android app.
The app opens to a dashboard with the options Drive, Recent, Shared with
Me and Offline. Tapping on Drive opens
up a list of all the files on your Google Drive. Using the icon at the top of
the screen, you can create a file or upload any type of file to your Google
Drive. You can create and edit only documents and spreadsheets using the app.
The file editing tools are basic, just like on Google Apps. Presentations and
images can only be viewed but not edited within the app. All the files you upload or edit from your
app are automatically synced with the cloud, so that you can access them from a
device or computer anywhere. Against each file on your drive is an icon with
the options to Rename, Share, Email or Offline. The Share and Email options
allow you to share any file on your drive with collaborators or send the file
by email. Offline makes the files available offline, so that you can access
them on your phone even when you don’t have an internet connection.
Google
Drive offers 5 GB of space free to store your data on the cloud. Additional
storage up to 16TB is available on a tiered pricing plan. The first few tiers
are 25GB for $2.49 per month, 100GB for $4.99 per month and 1TB for $49.99 per
month.
As
of now, the app has only limited functionality to organize your files into
collections – it does not allow you to create new collections or move files
between collections. You cannot provide a download link to your file either, as
you can with other cloud storage service providers. Privacy concerns have been
a major controversy since Google Drive launched, as the Terms of Use, though
explicitly stating that you own your content on Google Drive, also assert
Google’s license to use the content in various ways. This is different from
several other cloud providers like Dropbox and Microsoft, who state that the
only “use” that will be made of user content is to host it on their servers.