Google Drive launched back in April, and has proven to be immensely popular with million of users already using the free 5 GB of storage offered by the service. Now Google has made it possible to link Google Drive content with GMail.
The feature started rolling out only 16 hours ago, and will allow GMail users to attach files of up to 10GB, which is roughly 400 times larger than standard email attachments. Of course you"ll need to beef up your storage in order to do that, as with a free account it"s limited to 5GB (up to 16TB can be purchased though). The shared files that are stored in the cloud also ensures that the most up-to-date version is available to the recipient.
The permissions for shared files are also checked - a popup alert will prompt you to check the permissions without leaving the mail, even if you paste Drive links into the email. This ensures that the recipient has access to the shared files; it"s what Google calls a smart assistant.
The feature is only available with the new compose experience, so you"ll have to opt in for that if you want this service to eventually become active on your account over the next few days.
Suddenly video footage from your recent trip became a lot easier to share!
Source: GMail Blog | Images via Google
But wait!
On a slightly related note, Google Labs has also added a preview pane option to GMail. You can enable it by going to Settings > Labs > Preview Pane this will add a toggle to the inbox that allows Horizontal, Vertical or No Split mode. If you"re feeling adventurous you can add this experimental lab to your GMail experience; there are also a bunch of other handy labs to choose from as well.