Since this is simply a couple of checkboxes, I’m just going to provide a screenshot instead of a video.

Google Drive was released about an hour ago, for all Google accounts including Google Apps. The service offers 5 GB of free storage for everyone, with additional storage available at rates much higher than what Google previously offered through apps like Docs and Picasa. This is likely because files stored in Drive will be much more expensive for Google to manage, as they replicate files across multiple devices for their users. Bottom line, 5 GB for free is pretty great.

Unfortunately my Google Drive “is not ready yet” for any of my four Google/Gmail/Google Apps accounts, according to drive.google.com. I did notice two new options in the Google Apps Control Panel though.

The two options are: “Allows Users to Install Google Drive for Mac/PC” and “Allow Users to Install Google Drive Apps”, which is a really interesting point. Google calls out a few integrations in their blog post on the Enterprise blog, stating that Google Drive users can open documents from the Drive list in applications like LucidChart and Smartsheet.

This is really really awesome. Many of these third-party services are so useful, but managing different document lists for different apps isn’t practical. I assume that Google means your Smartsheet and LucidChart documents will be surfaced in the Drive list. I can’t wait for that! This seems to have been a very coordinated release, with Smartsheet’s Chrome Web Store listing already displaying Google Drive screenshots. Congrats to Google on what should be another excellent product.