SkyDrive Gets ODF Support, More Features Ahead of Google Drive Launch
Days before Google's official entry in the cloud hosting space (see Google Drive announcement here) comes Microsoft's announcement that they have improved their cloud hosting service SkyDrive. The service now supports file uploads of up to 300 Megabyte in the web browser (2 Gigabyte syncing from the desktop, at least under Windows 8), as well as the Open Document Format, short url support for Windows Phone images shared to Twitter, and sharing to Twitter.
The SkyDrive team furthermore made the announcement that they have big things coming soon to the service. It is not really clear what's meant by that. If you look at the feature set, one would expect operating system integration to be one of the top priorities of the team, as it is one of the features that SkyDrive lags in comparison to services such as Dropbox or SugarSync.
While it is possible to connect to SkyDrive on the desktop with the help of tools such as Gladinet, a first party solution would surely provide Microsoft with extra momentum to compete on an eye to eye level with Google and Google Drive in this regard.
We do know that Microsoft plans to integrate SkyDrive into the upcoming operating system Windows 8. While that would satisfy customers running that operating system, exclusivity would at the same time mean that the majority of SkyDrive customers would not be able to make use of the feature on their system.If Microsoft wants to compete with Google when it comes to desktop integration, SkyDrive needs to support at least the operating systems that Google Drive supports.
Microsoft has the advantage over Google Drive in other regards at the moment. With Google Drive launching with 5 Gigabytes of free space, SkyDrive users get five times as much. It is also likely that Office users will favor SkyDrive over Google Docs thanks to the integration of Office Web in SkyDrive.
With Google Drive launching, and great services like Dropbox and SkyDrive available, it is likely that we will be seeing some movement in this vertical. What's your favorite cloud hosting service right now, and why? And where will you be hosting your files online in a year's time? (via Caschy, via SkyDrive)
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Microsoft will reduce space to 7 GB for new accounts…
Interesting, do you have a source for this?
Very happy with Linux, LibreOffice & ODF support.
I think Skydrive has the maximum free storage too.
Healthy competition is getting us customers great value!
This page has a strange URL?
Google docs lacks the Navigation Pane that generates real-time heading-based hierarchical summary of the current document, and with Word, it is even possible to re-order “chapters” by drag-n-drop in this pane, Google is far behind, and this feature is a must-have for me, otherwise long articles become very hard to manage.
Microsoft has been adding features and refining to SkyDrive since the last 5-6 years. They don’t need a vague Google Drive announcement to make SkyDrive even better :)
This is good stuff! Let’s hope for some Win7 integration preview of what’s to come with win8.
“In the wake of” means immediately following. “Ahead of” would be more appropriate. Just FYI.
Maybe in the wake of the leaks and news of G Drive… ?