Google Drive Review

If you are browsing the internet very often, I’m sure that you’ve probably heard of Cloud space or cloud computing. But what in the world is that?! Don’t worry, this doesn’t have anything to do with the real clouds, but space specially allotted for You, as a user to store your data on. This works by incorporating various cloud services, and you don’t even need any sort of hardware or hard disks, to store the data. You upload your files to the server and you’re done. One of the best cloud services is Google Drive, which is the topic of today’s review.

What is Google Drive?

Google Drive is, obviously, a product of Google, regarding cloud spacing. As with every cloud space website, Google Drive offers you a possibility for uploading your data to their servers and, of course, downloading the data. So there is the main question here. How much does Google Drive costs, if it even costs anything, and how good are the upload speeds? Well, these questions will be answered below, keep reading.

Google Drive Performance and Features

When talking about performance, the upload speed is number one on my test list. I decided to go premium and buy 1TB of storage, just to see how much time will I need to fill it. After some days of uploading, Google Drive had an average speed that could fill up 1 TB in around eleven days, at least for my network settings and contract, and I don’t have the fastest internet out there. Results-wise, I must say it’s respectable, but nothing too impressive. The download speed, however, should be a little faster, at least that’s what I thought. Unfortunately, it’s also slow, so you can download 1TB of data in a little less than 11 days.

When speaking about Ease of Use, the things get a little interesting. While the upload is simple and can be done with just a few clicks, the download is more complicated. If you want to upload your data, just add files to your Google Drive folder and you’re pretty much done. On the other side, if you want to download the files, you can’t do that directly from the cloud storage app. Instead, you must log into your account, and then go to the folder and download the files.

Now, more about features. Feature-wise, Google Drive is one of my favorite cloud services. As this is Google’s work, and we know that Google is involved in pretty much everything, there is a great support for third-party apps. You can now share, sync and integrate files into your account using the third-party app support. This increases the overall value of this service, allowing you to easily share every kind of data with your friends or colleagues.

Google Drive Price

Aside from being a paid cloud space service, Google Drive offers a variant with 15GB of cloud space. However, this isn’t an excessive amount of space, allowing you to keep only the most important data, and if you work with images or videos, you’ll not find any use of this. Nevertheless, 15GB of space will come in handy for those less-demanding users, that want to keep a limited amount of pictures, videos, documents and even some smaller games. Now, let’s speak more about paid subscriptions. I don’t like that Google cut up on some features, letting us choose from just three different subscriptions which include 15 GB, 100GB and 1TB a month.

A 15GB edition comes in free, as we mentioned, while 100GB and 1TB are paid. You’ll agree that 100GB is also not-that-much space, but for a price of $1.99 a month, I think it’s worth trying. 100GB will be enough for some small files, like songs and images. And in the end, 1TB of space costs $9.99 a month, which isn’t too much, but I think it could be two or three dollars cheaper. Overall, $9.99 a month isn’t that much, as many of us earn even more in just a single day, and to be real, 1TB of space isn’t small. Try to buy an HDD or SSD with that much space, and you’ll see the price.

Google Drive also offers a subscription plan for your family, but it’s way too expensive, costing around $40 for a computer in a SMALL family. The more computers you have, value grows, and it will be much less than $40, but again, Google Drive is expensive for this feature, so I recommend to try IDrive if you want this subscription plan.

Cloud Security

I expected much more from the Google Drive’s security, but I was left disappointed. Both file transfer and uploaded files’ security is at stake here. Upload and download of the files are protected with SSL transfer, while the uploaded files are encrypted with the cheapest 128-bit encryption, so you’ll have to let the employees of Google take care of your files. Aside from that, there isn’t a possibility to get a personal encryption key, making the security even thinner.

However, there is a two-step verification which will allow the service to send you an email or SMS with a second PIN that you can enter. This allows for a much tighter security, as it requires your presence near the computer and the smartphone. Still, file security is the main concern of Google Drive, which I hope will be fixed in the future years.

Verdict

It’s time to wrap up our (i hope) helpful review. Google Drive is an excellent cloud service, with some great features, but its somehow let down with major security issues, which can represent a serious problem for some users. But, if you like some free features, great integration with third-party apps and reliable cloud space service, then Google Drive is great for you. I personally use Google Drive for my needs, and 1TB of space sounds like the best bet for the new users. However, you can use Google Drive however you want, and if you don’t like it there are tons of other cloud services, which we’ll also review in the next articles.