Google Drive gets file preview feature, mobile gets video streaming

Google's cloud storage and file synchronization service Google Drive has been around for a while. It is Google's go-to solution when it comes to syncing and storing files online. The company has integrated it into many of its service, Google Docs comes to mind for instance, which certainly improved the service's reach.

Yesterday Google announced an upcoming change to Google Drive that is being rolled out as we speak and should be available to all users in the next couple of days.

The company has integrated a new preview feature in to Google Drive which is available for more than 30 different file types including image and video formats as well as document formats such as pdf. To use the new feature, right-click on a supported file type on Google Drive and select preview from the context menu.

A preview of the selected item is then displayed on the screen. What makes this preview feature interesting is that you can browse related items easily right from it. Google displays a thumbnail stream at the bottom that you can click on, or you can use the back and forward buttons that are displayed on the left and right side of the browser window to switch to the previous or next item in line.

Previews not only show static imagery, you can also preview videos right from there or scroll through documents. Another interesting feature that has been integrated into previewing files on Google Drive is the option to copy text from the preview right away. Google furthermore built-in zooming options, and options to download, print, share or open files for editing.

In other news: the official Google Drive application for Android was also updated yesterday. The main new feature that it makes available is support for video streaming on Honeycomb or newer versions of Android. According to the release notes, Google has improved the application's performance across the board and integrated pinch to zoom support in presentation mode.

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