Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) has been leading the market for quite some time with web based services, including search, email and documents. On Tuesday, Google Inc. released a more streamlined cloud experience for its users, the long-awaited Google Drive. The service provides users with 5GB of free storage, which is also integrated with Google Docs and many of Google’s other online services.

This initial 5GB offering is similar to Apple’s iCloud which also gives users a free 5GB of storage. Following the initial 5GB, users can then upgrade to a higher tier of storage, and for GOOG, that means up to as much as 16TB of storage which is far more than the amount of storage on any computer hard drive.

Today, we’re introducing Google Drive—a place where you can create, share, collaborate, and keep all of your stuff. Whether you’re working with a friend on a joint research project, planning a wedding with your fiancé or tracking a budget with roommates, you can do it in Drive. You can upload and access all of your files, including videos, photos, Google Docs, PDFs and beyond.

The storage can be accessed directly through Google Docs, or through clients on PC, Mac, Android and very soon, iOS devices. Google promised that the iOS app would be available “very soon”, with it being very likely that the search giant is still waiting for approval from Apple. Google Drive operates very differently than other cloud solutions, including a feature that allows users to open up as many as 30 different file types directly in the browser.

This allows users of the service to open up and view files such as images and documents, regardless of its format. Google Drive has the potential to be one of the next reliable cloud solutions available online. With its availability on numerous platforms, including iOS, it brings into question, whether this service will compete with iCloud.

{via MacRumors}

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