Google Cloud and Google Drive both are products of Google and are misunderstood as same but in reality, they are similar and not the same. Google Cloud and Google Drive both are cloud storage systems where you can safely keep your backups.
Google Cloud and Google Drive made backup easy since before online storage, people used to have their backups on hard drives, people used to buy multiple hard drives for multiple data storage.
Many times hard-drives used to get damaged and not only the repair cost was huge maintenance but also it used to happen sometimes that the data inside the hard drives turned out to be corrupted which cannot be retrieved again. Sometimes, getting your hard drives repair and data retrieved and safe is a tough and hard job to accomplish.
Google Cloud vs Google Drive
The main difference between Google Cloud and Google Drive is google cloud is an online storage platform whereas google drive is a personal storage platform. Google in real terms has made our lives easy.
Comparison Table Between Google Cloud and Google Drive
| Parameters of Comparison | Google Cloud | Google Drive |
|---|---|---|
| Audience | Google Cloud is for developers to store their backups. | Google Drive is for any normal user to store personal backups. |
| Cost | Google Cloud costs vary from 4 different storage options available. | Google Drive is free for the first 15 GB of storage and aftermath, |
| Features | Google Cloud is an online storing platform that works on its infrastructure. | Google Drive which was developed by Google is free for uploading and syncing data. |
| Security | Google Cloud has Granular IAM permission as security. | Google Drive is secured with Gmail Account’s password. |
| Files | Users can obtain the deleted or overwritten files while versioning. | Google Drive offers file sharing, multiple user editing with ease. |
| Sync | Google Cloud needs 3rd party for sync. | Google Drive has its own. |
| Location | Google Cloud has the feature of specifying the location for backup. | Google Drive lacks features regarding location information. |
What is Google Cloud?
Google Cloud Storage is a service provided online to store data on GCP (Google Cloud Platform). Google Cloud Storage has very tight security for storing backups and that’s the reason developers choose Google Cloud over Google Drive.
Google Cloud Storage is selected to be more suitable for enterprises to use. In short, Google Cloud Storage is IaaS – Infrastructure as a Service. Google Cloud Storage has launched on 19th May 2010 approximately 10 years ago. Google Cloud offers four different storage classes namely Multi-Regional Storage Class, Regional Storage Class, Nearline Storage Class, and Coldline Storage Class. Uploads of Google Cloud Storage have strong after read-after-write consistency. Google Storage also provides the feature for resumable upload, where even after the communication failure of the flow of data you can again upload it.
Companies who use Google Cloud Storage / Google Cloud Platform are as follows:
- eBay
- The New York Times
- LG ENS
- Metro
- HSBC
- McKesson
- Nielsen
- National Institutes of Health
- PayPal
- Sky U.K
- Target
- AccuWeather
- 20th Century Fox
- Bloomberg
- American eagle
- Bueno
- Colgate- Palmolive
- Go-Jek
- Keller Williams
- LATAM Airlines
- The Football Association
- The Home Depot
What is Google Drive?
Google developed Google Drive as a file storage platform and synchronization service. Google Drive has launched on 24th April 2012 approximately 8 years ago. Till July 2018, the number of users of Google Drive was approximately 1 billion.
Google Docs, Google Sheets, and Google Slides are encompassed by Google Drive which allows collaborative editing and file sharing. Google Drive is a one-stop to all your spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, pdfs, excel sheets storage, plus you can access it anywhere anytime and even edit and share. Google Drive offers 15gb of free storage available from Google One. For more storage, Google One also provides 100 GB, 200 GB, 2 TB, 10 TB, 20 TB, 30 TB, and more. For Google Workspace, Google Drive works as a key component.
Google Drive works as SaaS – Software as a Service, it is available for Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android. Google Drive also supports easy sharing and access at anytime from anywhere. Google Drive acts as a default storage option for Gmail and Google Docs. Taking your documents backup with google drive makes your documents safe and easily accessible.
Companies who use Google Drive are as follows:
- StackShare
- Lyft
- Stack
- Alibaba Travels
- Kmong
- CRED
- Fiverr
- Paralect
- Lime
- Forum.eu
- Yousign
- Justmop
- Mak It
- Oxylabs
Main Differences Between Google Cloud and Google Drive
- Google Cloud is IaaS – Infrastructure as a Service and Google Drive is SaaS – Software as a Service.
- Google Cloud is more suitable for enterprises, whereas Google Drive is for personal backups for normal users.
- Google Cloud doesn’t provide 15gb free storage whereas Google Drive does.
- Google Cloud needs payment only for what we use whereas Google Drive has monthly subscriptions.
- Google Cloud storage is an online storage option whereas Google Drive storage is personal storage.
Conclusion
In short, Google Cloud Storage is a developer service and Google Drive is a personal service. For instance, Google Drive seems to be much cheaper than Google Cloud. In conclusion, we can say that Google Cloud is more often used by Developers to save backups and time for solving problems whereas Google Drive is made for personal data backups like hard disk backups YouTubers use.
Google Cloud, as well as Google Drive both, are Google’s products though they have a different level of storages and prices as taking consideration of the economic conditions of every individual. But if an individual is looking for tighter security then Google Cloud is the one to go for.
Many times, we find it hard to send attachments on mail which exceeds the limit, but Google Cloud and Google Drive have a solution for that, we just need to upload our document on drive or cloud and share the link. And it’s done.
Google Cloud is a kind of disk storage whereas Google Drive is User Interface storage.
References
- https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/7753150/
- https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1215341