After an accidental unveiling earlier in the week during a developer hangout, Google have now officially launched their cloud based storage service - Google Drive.

Packing 5 Gb of storage for the free service (the same as Apple’s iCloud offering), there is scope to up the amount of storage to a whopping 16Tb, although pricing plans have only been disclosed as far as 1Tb.

With numerous other cloud services already existing, Dropbox, iCloud, Box to name a few, is there any pull to use Google’s latest offering? The answer really depends upon whether you’re an avid Google user already. Those familiar with Google Docs will feel right at home with Drive as it operates in much the same way. Real time group collaboration on documents is a neat feature and tie in’s with Google+ (photos and videos already on your Drive account can be shared instantly) will heighten it’s appeal to many. Those that already use other cloud services however, have little reason to move everything over to Drive at the moment… although another 5Gb of free storage for opening an account does sound quite nice now you mention it!

Will you be using Drive for cloud storage? Let us know in the comments box below.