I’ve always liked the idea of Windows Live SkyDrive and DropBox, but they just don’t get it 100% right (although DropBox is pretty nice).

I’m a heavy user of Google services and there are so many ways online storage can tap into each of these services. When I go into SkyDrive to access a Word document or PowerPoint presentation, I would expect it to give me an option to open it in Office Live, but it doesn’t, it just downloads it. DropBox suffers from this too, but it’s acceptable as they don’t have their own solution. Another gripe with SkyDrive is the lack of a desktop application for managing your online storage. There are third party alternatives, but they lack in speed and are quite buggy. DropBox’s application is seamless brilliance. Just simply manipulate files in a folder just like you normally would and they automatically sync.

But where both these services lack, I think Google can fix. They have a wide infrastructure of hardware and software services, such as Picasa Web Albums, Google Docs, GMail, YouTube and Blogger. Google Web Drive could integrate these services (in particular Picasa Web Albums and Docs), and provide a single place to share files, pictures and documents, or keep them private for personal use. Imagine you upload a video to Web Drive so you can access it later at another computer. And then later you want to put it on YouTube, so you just right click, then click publish to YouTube, fill out a form, and no second upload. The same could be done for pictures. Saving files from GMail to Web Drive could be a single click away.

Of course Google could go and create the best interface and integration with their other services, but if they neglect desktop software, they will have problems. DropBox is great because of it’s software, not it’s web interface. In fact a portable application that can be installed on a memory stick would be very handy. I really hope Google can pull something special out of the bag with this, and I’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for it.

You can add extra features such as mouse gestures for navigation, custom keyboard shortcuts, and other tweaks designed to enhance the Gmail experience. Some cool, some kinda pointless (to me anyway), but I’m sure someone will make good use of them.