After comparing the two services, Google Drive emerged as the winner, based on four reasons. Let’s take a look at them.
Google Docs Does it Better
[For an opposing view, check out: 5 Reasons Microsoft SkyDrive is Better Than Google Drive]
Docs makes it easy to save documents in a variety of formats including Word, while Web Office’s documents are saved only in Office formats. Docs loads completely in less than five seconds but it takes Web Office takes two to three times that to load.
Better Search Capabilities
Google Drive searches your images through proprietary technology first introduced in image search back in 2009. Images are compared against a database to find possible matches. For example f you and your best friend are standing in front of the Eiffel Tower, that photo would show up in a search for “Paris.”
My colleague Ian Paul noted some flaws in the image search function, but he rightly points out that Google says the image recognition technology is in its early stages and should improve over time.
Video Previews
In order to view media files from SkyDrive, you will have to download them first. Google Drive has a great feature that generates a preview any time a video is uploaded. Videos are then streamed from Google’s service when viewing them on Google Drive.
Google does not allow the same for MP3 files: those must be downloaded. I am going to assume that this has something to do with record industry concerns, but at least Google isn’t blocking the file type from being shared.
More Paid Storage Options
There’s an added bonus to all this space: Gmail accounts gets 25GB of storage, and any unused space can also be used for photos you may have stored in Google’s Picasa photo service.
SkyDrive offers 20 GB of storage for only $10 a year, a cheaper entry price, but it caps its storage at 100 GB for $50 a year.
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