Apple’s iCloud service has recently achieved 125 million users, up roughly 25 million subscribers since February. These numbers stand upon the launch of Google’s own Drive cloud service yesterday, and it will be interesting to see how the new platform stacks up against iCloud.
To compare the two, both offer 5GB of free storage, though iCloud is a substantially more expensive for pay storage – 50GB per year on Google Drive costs $29.94, while the same amount of space on iCloud is $100. Alas, it would appear that all things Apple are more costly, even if virtual.
Apple launched iCloud in tandem with the release of the iPhone 4S in October, though it might be safe to assume that Google Drive might soon compete with the platform in regards to number of users – though iCloud’s recent bump in members should be noted – and it’s too soon to tell how well Google Drive is really doing.
Google Drive will offer iOS integration likely by summer, and also features collaborative editing via Google Docs. Though, iCloud offers the upload of ‘unlimited’ files sizes, while Google Drive offers transfers up to 10GB. This sort of thing can be relevant for video editors and Blu-ray pirates. Drive also offers Android integration, obviously. When it comes down do it, the price points of the two services might not be so relevant, as the casual user likely won’t need more than the free 5 gigs both clouds offer.