Google Drive, the company’s flagship file storage service, is in its sixth year running, and now, according to the company, Drive is about to be used by 1 billion people worldwide.
The announcement came from the Google Cloud Next conference in San Francisco, according to TechCrunch, though Google wouldn’t get into the details about exactly when its billionth user will officially log on, only saying that it’ll happen “later this week.”
This will officially be Google’s eighth product to reach more than a billion users; the other services include Gmail, Chrome, and Google Maps. Last year, Android reached 2 billion active users, making it the biggest mobile operating system in the world.
Since Drive launched back in 2012, it’s stored trillions of files and has more than 800 million daily users, according to stats given at last year’s Google I/O Conference. Recently, Google launched some new features with a focus toward its business-minded customers, including Team Drives and a File Stream to maximize the space available to users.
Comments
I use an Android phone, have Google Drive, but it has become a depository for things I never use……………it has my old music on it, that I never stream, and it also has some photos on it backed up from my phone like 8 years ago. I switched to Onedrive a few years ago, after realizing I could get 1tb of storage with my 365 account. It has treated me well thus far.
By NAS81 on 07.25.18 2:48pm
Yeah, it’s OneDrive for me too. As a photographer, I’m still tied to a relatively powerful Windows based Desktop computer for most of my work and my Phone, tablet, and laptop are satellites that orbit around the D.T. It is very convenient for me to be able to link everything to the Windows environment.
And for $99/year getting 5 MS Office licenses and 1 TB of drive space for each license is a real money saver
By Glen Barrington on 07.25.18 9:53pm
seconded. OneDrive with 365 is unbeatable for the moment.
By The Quik Mix on 07.26.18 1:22am
I live in Drive. It’s my number one visited webpage – after The Verge, of course.
By Ollieollieollie on 07.25.18 3:16pm
Same. Pretty much everything I work on, save for later, files, etc are in my Google Drive. I absolutely love the service.
By KidAKidB on 07.25.18 5:25pm
And still it has no official Linux client so I don’t use it.
By apoptosis on 07.25.18 6:44pm
Dropbox is definitely the best but Drive is free with 15GB and has better pricing for more storage
By Atobe E on 07.25.18 7:26pm
Does everyone with a Gmail account count as a drive user or do you have to actually put something in it?
By shabanga on 07.25.18 9:49pm
Yeah, I wondered that too. I guess technically, I AM a G Drive user, even though it mostly sits idle. They still have to have that 15 GB available in case I want to use it.
By Glen Barrington on 07.25.18 9:56pm
Well, given Google announced passing a billion Gmail users back in Feb 2016, probably not. There are probably a lot of Gmail users who only use Drive for large attachments since they have to be shared via Google Drive.
By EnglishMike on 07.26.18 12:04am
Depends how they are counting, active accounts each month or similar is the real measure. I have 5-10 documents in google drive accumulated over the years and probably count in these stats even though I go months betwene uses. I use onedrive/office 365 usually.
They could also be counting google photo users potentially.
By Pete2 on 07.26.18 6:08am
I actually like iCloud with the 50g $1/mo plan. It’s really good for personal use. Wish they would offer a Small business option with Shared Folders. They allow only individual Doc sharing currently. That’s lousy for a Team.
By Kyleh on 07.26.18 7:32am
Nothing beats OneDrive. GDrive, for me, feels too much like a web-based storage service, where OneDrive’s integration with Windows feels more like an extension of my local storage. About a year ago, I pulled all of my photos off of GDrive and, if you’ve never done this, let me be very clear, it was a real nightmare. You can’t simply drag and drop content out of Gdrive — you have to run a batch process using a dedicated utility to create compressed extracts — and the great news is the extract tool crashed/failed over and over again. NOT user friendly.
OneDrive operates much more like a hard drive connected to your computer or phone and uses more of the traditional methods for using / managing files.
By ZigZang on 07.26.18 11:12am
Eh? Google drive just syncs with my windows PC fine. I never touch the web interface.
By theratchetnclank on 07.26.18 2:25pm
Well, If an application is written to do so, Win 10 can treat OneDrive the same as a local drive without going through the sync folder.
Office 365 does this, and not just the online apps but the standalone apps too. and it works well. ACDSee the Windows based Photo manager/Editor claimed to do this for a month or two, and then shut up about it. I don’t know anyone who got it to work. I suspect it isn’t as easy to program for as 3rd party vendors would like!
By Glen Barrington on 07.27.18 10:41pm