Google Drive likely to launch in mid-April; will offer 5GB space.

It appears that the initial rumours of Google’s online storage service are coming true, after all. We talked about a possible screenshot that showed the service in action. Now, there are fresh rumours that the service may be launched as early as next month. TalkAndroid has got their hands on a screenshot of the the new service. There’s a clear mention of 5GB of free space being made available with the service. There’s a Download Google Drive button as well, which suggests that a local OS installation is possible as well. Of course, the domain http://drive.google.com will also be accessible to mobile phones, tablets and desktop users using a web browser. The subdomain is currently active on Google’s site, but it throws up a 404 error, as of now.

There was initial news that Google would be providing 2GB of space with the service, but that has clearly been upped to 5GB. The service should offer great integration between all of Google’s services as well as all the devices that their users use. Google should, however consider upping that space to above the 20GB mark as there are already services that offer much more storage space. Microsoft’s service SkyDrive offers 25GB of free space to its users. If Google Drive does launch in the next couple of weeks, it’s safe to assume that future releases of Chrome OS and Android - Jelly Bean will have Google Drive integrated into the OS.

Google’s Drive service should compete with other major free online storage services, such as Box.net and Dropbox. The last screenshot we had talked about included a software installation, which means that the service would be accessible directly from the desktop, possibly from Windows Explorer. The ability to quickly save files to the cloud without having to manually access a web page and use the web interface would be great. This would be a neat little feature to have on existing Google Android and Chrome OS devices. Being able to directly store documents and data directly through the operating system would be handy.