After years of speculation, Google Drive was released today, giving users 5GB of free storage to sync across computers, and finally giving Google a viable competitor to Dropbox, Microsoft's SkyDrive, Apple's iCloud, and the like.

Google announced the new service today and it's available at drive.google.com. Like Dropbox, it makes a special folder in your computer's file system, and any file put in the folder will sync across devices. It's available for Windows, Macs, and Android. Google said it's "working hard" on a Drive app for iOS devices.

On the Web, numerous third-party vendors have already integrated Chrome apps with Google Drive, and Drive has a browser-based file manager as well as integration with Google Docs to display any documents that Docs is compatible with.

As mentioned, each user gets 5GB of free storage, compared to Dropbox's 2GB, SkyDrive's 7GB, and iCloud's 5GB. An upgrade to 25GB is $2.49 per month, 100GB is $4.99 per month, and a full terabyte is available for $49.99 a month. The options actually go all the way to 16TB for $799.99 a month. Any paid account also upgrades Gmail storage to 25GB.

File size limits is something we're sure Ars readers want to know about. Google tells us the individual file size limit is 10GB. Just to test it out, I've copied a 4GB file to my local Google Drive folder. It copied to the local folder fine, but after ten minutes it's still syncing and hasn't yet appeared in the Web-based Drive interface. UPDATE: The 4GB file failed to upload and Google Drive has stopped trying to sync the file, saying "an unknown issue has occurred." We'll try again later to see if it's just an early-adopter hiccup. If you're wondering, the file is a virtual disk image for running Fedora in VirtualBox, which I picked solely for its size.

The Google Drive installation process works the same on Windows and Mac. Once you've installed the 68MB application, you'll go through a few screens to set Drive up on your computer:

There are just a few setup screens. You can click through in seconds, or take a moment to look at the advanced setup options:

If you use Google Docs, the Web-based file manager will look familiar:

Setting up Google Drive is very easy. I haven't encountered any hiccups other than not being able to upload a 4GB file, although some of our commenters are reporting error messages telling them Google Drive is "not ready" yet. The system, in my limited use so far, seems about as smooth as Dropbox. But Google has plenty of competition—Microsoft just updated SkyDrive and is making a serious push into the market.

While Dropbox has achieved the biggest market share in consumer file sharing, companies like Box and SpiderOak have gained success in the corporate market by focusing on business security requirements.

Google touted its collaboration features in Drive, saying "Google Docs is built right into Google Drive, so you can work with others in real time on documents, spreadsheets and presentations. Once you choose to share content with others, you can add and reply to comments on anything (PDF, image, video file, etc.) and receive notifications when other people comment on shared items."

Of course, search is a part of Drive as well, and Google promised great improvements.

Users can "search by keyword and filter by file type, owner and more," Google Chrome Senior Vice President Sundar Pichai wrote. "Drive can even recognize text in scanned documents using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology. Let’s say you upload a scanned image of an old newspaper clipping. You can search for a word from the text of the actual article. We also use image recognition so that if you drag and drop photos from your Grand Canyon trip into Drive, you can later search for [grand canyon] and photos of its gorges should pop up. This technology is still in its early stages, and we expect it to get better over time."