I’ve made numerous posts analyzing different online backup providers for things like reliability, compatibility with smart phones, and storage space offered. Google Drive has always been at the top of my list for a variety of different reasons, however, today it’s very clear that they are number one in the industry. They’re combining the power of their recent purchase QuickOffice with their Drive service to beat all of the competitors in the industry. To make things even better, link your QuickOffice account with Drive and you can get an additional 10 gigs of storage space until September 26th.
Google purchased QuickOffice a year and a half ago and is finally starting to make excellent use of it. By linking their online backup service with it, you can now edit Microsoft Office documents right from your tablet or smart phone. To encourage use of the service they’re offering anyone who links their accounts by the 26th an extra 10 gigs to their Drive account. It should be noted that this space only lasts two years, but hopefully all users will have that kind of space by then. It’s unclear what would happen to your data at the end of this period. However, one thing is clear: this is just another nail in the coffin for other backup services like Dropbox and Microsoft’s Sky.
I would say that since the ability to link your QuickOffice account has been allowed, Drive is now the best Dropbox alternative on the market. If you’re a fan of Apple, you can download both of the applications for iOS devices as well as Android. There are third party applications for Blackberry users, but unfortunately nothing official has been released yet.
No matter what you’re looking for in online backup, Google Drive is the best competitor to Dropbox like services. Excellent support for multiple platforms, high storage space, and seamless editing of office documents directly from mobile devices all make Drive the best contender of 2013. If you’re looking for a solid free backup service, look no further.