Word on the winds is that Google will launching their own cloud storage service – called Google Drive – next week.

The service will go head to head with long established titans of the cloud-storage scene such as current market leader Dropbox and Canonical’s ‘Ubuntu One’.

Google Drive – “All your files – everywhere.”

With its release yet to be formerly announced by Google it’s no surprise to learn that official specifics of the Google Drive service are scarce on the ground.

But leaks, hints and rumours point towards Drive offering at least 5GB of free online storage to users. Details on additional storage options beyond that are, as yet, unknown.

In order to compete with Dropbox and similar Google Drive has to offer more than a place to put your files; it needs to provide a way to easily access, edit and upload them too.

To this end a set of applications are expected to launch for use alongside the service, allowing users to sync files to and from their Google Drive directly from their operating system – be it mobile,desktop – or through a browser at drive.google.com.

Mac App

A leaked build of the Mac app has already been uncovered by one leading tech site (although as the service is not yet live it doesn’t do anything).

With Mac users tended to it’s safe to assume that Windows will also be supported with a similar app – but what about Linux?

No official word, but, based on Google’s past products, it’s likely that a Linux version of the Google Drive sync client will be produced – although may not be available at launch (E.g. as with Chrome, Google Music Manager, etc)

But given that Google’s own internal OS is based upon Ubuntu, and that Google Drive is likely to be useful to its employees as it is to Joe User, I would venture as far as to say that a Google Drive sync client for Linux is all but a certainty.

Will You Use Google Drive? No. I’ll stick with Dropbox/Ubuntu One/etc

No, I don’t use cloud storage services

Yes

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