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Cloud Computing: 15 Google GDrive Alternatives to Consider for Cloud Storage

Google has entered more than a few IT markets as a big-name latecomer—search, smartphone operating systems with Android, and social networking (Buzz network, Google+) being but three of the most well-known.

Nonetheless, the Web service giant has put together a pretty solid record of success. Now the company, whose popular Gmail service has provided each user a generous 7GB of free email storage for a couple of years, has finally moved its long-anticipated GDrive cloud storage service into general availability. This has been in the works for more than six years, and during that time, a lot of competitors have already taken a big head start in the market.

Literally dozens of cloud storage providers are available to handle your files in a safe place. Here are 15 of them, based on eWEEK’s cloud storage coverage since 2006. Links are included for each to obtain details. By and large, all of them offer some kind of "freemium" deal, with limited free storage and a set of desirable extras if you don’t mind paying $5 to $25 per month, on average.

Amazon CloudBerry

This is one of the first consumer storage services created by a pioneer of "cloud" services. CloudBerry Online Backup is a tested backup and restore program to be used with Amazon S3. 

Dropbox

Dropbox is a free application for Windows, Mac, Linux and Mobile file-sharing that costs $10 per month for 50GB basic service. It has a lot of devotees. 

Box

Box is now mostly aimed at enterprises, but serves consumers, also. It’s integrated with Google Apps and Salesforce.com. It includes a free app for mobile devices and offers data encryption using 256-bit Secure Sockets Layer (SSL).