Google Drive Syncs All of Your Data to the Cloud

It's here. Finally. At last! Google Drive is live. All of your data — accessible in the cloud — from any computer, tablet or smartphone. The cloud has finally arrived for the masses.

Google Drive's unveil has been so many years in the making that even Google is likening it to the Loch Ness Monster.

As predicted, Google's foray into cloud storage is going to be huge. The big pushes for Drive are collaboration and search.

Google Docs is baked directly into Google Drive and a commenting system works on ANY file — even videos and photos. Google is boasting advanced image recognition that'll let you search for keywords even in scanned text documents and photos as well as search for keywords related to photos you've taken. For example, you might search "Grand Canyon" and Drive will find your Grand Canyon pics without any special tagging required.

Drive users will have 5GB of free storage to stash all of their videos, photos, Google Docs or any file they want.

Should you need more than 5GB of storage, Drive has paid upgrades with monthly subscriptions that go like this: 25GB ($2.50), 100GB ($5) and 1TB ($50). Paid subscribers also get their Gmail storage bumped up to 25GB.

Of course, all of this is kind of meaningless without device synergy. Drive has it. With either a Mac, PC or Android app (iOS is on its way), all of your data is a screen away. This is the future. Apple's banking on iCloud and now Google's following suit. Local storage is about to take one to the chest.