Google released its cloud service, Drive, 5 days back, and have not wasted any time in integrating it into ChromeOS 20, currently in the developer channel. It will be quite some time before it makes its way to the release channel, but it’s a start. It can clearly be seen that the current integration is an extremely basic integration, and still needs a lot of work.
It appears as a folder on the left pane in the file management window of ChromeOS. There is a column labeled “available offline”, but as of now there is no way to download files to the internal storage of the machine, although it should be coming anytime soon. There is no option to upload files directly from the file manager either, and as of now one needs to upload it using the web interface.
The addition of a Google Drive folder to the file manager of ChromeOS marks a change from ChromeOS’ initial days, where the file manager was hidden from plain sight. Seems like Google has realized that users still want some kind of file management, especially when it comes to documents, pictures and the likes.
