google drive

The Google Drive desktop client is dead. Long live Google Drive File Stream! Actually, also long live Google Backup & Sync! Google has just announced the general availability of its new Drive File Stream desktop application for all G Suite users. But even if you aren’t such a customer, you might also need to pay heed, because with Drive File Stream’s availability comes the deprecation and, soon, shut down of the old Google Drive client for PCs and Macs.

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The cloud storage wars just got a bit more interesting. Box just recently announced its Box Drive offering to practically replace shared network folders at work. Now Google is also expanding the scope of its own Google Drive cloud solution but with a nod towards regular consumers instead of the enterprise. With the upcoming Backup and Sync tool, users on Windows and macOS will be able to select whole folders to sync with Google Drive, making it easy as pie to store all your data on the mothership.

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Computing devices are getting more powerful, more varied, and more ubiquitous, but the data storage in these devices hasn't changed that much. We are still beholden to the HDDs, SSDs, and eMMCs or UFS of yesteryears. In fact, the storage story has become even more complicated because each device has its own storage that you have to manage or keep in sync with other devices.

Enter cloud computing and cloud storage, with its promise of being able to access your data anytime, anywhere. Well, as long as you have an Internet connection, that is. It is an inescapable fact of modern day computing life and it pays to know the choices you have. Here are ten of the top cloud storage options this half of the year.

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Apple went into overdrive with the announcements it made yesterday during its WWDC 2017 keynote, but one small yet important change to iCloud wasn't given much attention. It seems that Apple has reconsidered its iCloud pricing, ultimately giving heavy iCloud users more storage for their money. This could very well ignite a cloud storage pricing war between iCloud and competitors like Google Drive at a pretty important moment.

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Google CEO Sundar Pichai just took the stage at Google I/O 2017, and he's starting the presentation off with a bang. After touching on the scale of this year's event, he shifted to focus to the services and products that Google offers. As it turns out, many of Google's services have hit important milestones, especially Android, which just hit 2 billion active devices around the world in the past week.

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Google has added new tools to its online cloud storage service, Drive. Among these new tools, as Google calls them, is the Google Vault for Drive capabilities, giving admins control over files stored within a Drive account. There’s also Team Drives, a way for teams of people to better manage their shared cloud files and their overall team members. Google is also making it easier to find files using machine intelligence-based Quick Access.

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Well that took them long enough. The battle for cloud storage supremacy has somewhat quieted down in recent months (will leave it to the reader to decide who won), so we don't really foresee any major pricing changes, save for the occasional seasonal sale or discount. That said, we're definitely welcoming with open arms any, hopefully permanent, change that will give our wallets, and our minds, a bit of a respite. Like even a 16% or 17% discount when purchasing Google Drive space for a whole year, instead of having to renew every month.

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The smartphone divide between the Apple iPhone and Google Android is one of the fiercest and most vicious in the tech industry. Lately, however, we’ve been seeing some exodus from either camp, dissatisfied with developments (or lack thereof) on either side. One thing that keeps people from completely jumping ship is the anxiety about their data, particularly contacts, appointments, and, more importantly, photos. Just as when it unveiled the Pixel phone, Google is making it even easier to jump from an iPhone to an Android. And all you need is a Google Drive account.

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It takes a company with a lot of vision (or a lot of money) to look at whiteboard and decide to connect it to the cloud, but Google has done just that with Jamboard. Introduced today, the Jamboard comes equipped a 55-inch touchscreen display that's capable of 4K output. If that sounds expensive, it's because it is, with Google saying the Jamboard will be offered for "less than $6,000."

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Google Drive’s search has been refined with natural language processing, Google has announced. The functionality is currently only available for Google Drive search on the web, but it is joined by other improvements that make the searching process faster and more simple overall. Simply put, the addition of natural language processing means a user can type a search term phrased the same way they’d say it if they were talking, such as, “find my November 2016 budget."

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Google Drive has made a small but significant change that better enables it to handle duplicate files. When the same file is downloaded and then re-uploaded, rather than changing the name to reflect that it is a duplicate, Drive will list the most recently uploaded file as “version x,” making it easy to see which file you edited last or to find an older version of the file that you may need.

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Google pushed out an update for the Android version of its Google Drive app this week; several changes come with the update, the primary one being new support for adding file shortcuts to the homescreen. The app is also a little more convenient for those who primarily manage their Drive account using mobile devices — it is now possible to alter the account’s storage plan from within the mobile app rather than having to fire up a laptop.

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