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Its day 2 of Google IO 2012 and today Sunder Pichai Vice President of Chrome announced some great updates to their browser, Google Drive and unifying experiences across all your devices. While there is a lot to talk about, this post is essentially going to cover some of the major announcements and upgrades to Google Drive. Drive was launched around 10 weeks ago when the search giant decided that it’s time Google users have the privilege of having their own Hard Drive on the cloud. Drive allows us to have 5GB of space that can contain files, folders music etc.
One of the coolest things about Google Drive is the fact that not only do you get cloud storage like many other services out there but the files can be edited with specific applications catering to their needs. In today’s announcement Google declared that now you can do offline editing for Documents which are stored as a local cache and uploaded to the cloud as soon as your device is connected to the internet. New API’s for offline editing will also be released allowing any external Chrome application to take use of their service.At IO 2012 Google also announced Google Drive and Chrome Apps coming for your iOS devices. This is great news for those G-fans but now a panic attack for Apple. Although the Chrome app is quite similar to the one demoed for Jelly Bean 4.1 the Google Drive application has one very important and innovative feature that really blew our minds.
Now you can type keywords like Pyramid or Cars and Google Drive will automatically scan images and find the ones similar to that keyword. The way they do it is by using a new technology that scans image pixels for relevant search queries and actually understands what you are finding inside your photo stockpile. Now that’s Google! It will be interesting to see exactly how accurate the search results perform when my get the actual app for my iPad. Files can also be stored offline reading but I am not sure whether iOS devices are supported with offline editing like the Chrome Books.
Google is simply showing the world why they are one of the best when it comes to innovative web applications. I certainly expect that DropBox now faces serious threats unless they spring up some quick features like the ones showcased today.