Some stuck in neutral waiting for Google Drive

By Michelle Maltais

April 24, 2012 12:26 PM PT

If you’ve gone to drive.google.com, you’ll find that not everyone gets past the velvet rope immediately. But you can take comfort in the free bump to 10 gigabytes in Gmail storage.

Those who get immediate access to Google Drive will see “Get Started with 5 GB free.” The rest of us get to wait a bit.

For the wait-listed, when you log in and go to the Google Drive link, you’ll see in the top right corner a message stating that your Google Drive is not ready. After clicking on “Notify me,” there’s a message saying you’ll get an email alerting you it’s ready.

When you do finally get access, you can then install the app on your Mac or PC or download the mobile app.

In the Drive getting-started video, you can see that third-party applications within Google Drive include Script, Balsamiq Mockups, DocuSign, GIFPAL, HelloFax, Lucidchart, MindMeister and SlideRocket.

Several other apps work straight out of the gate such as online project management and collaboration tool Smartsheet and a couple of integrated offerings come from Autodesk-- free online photo editor Pixlr and drafting application AutoCAD.

To celebrate the launch of Google Drive, all Gmail users are getting an increase in email storage from 7.5 gigabytes to 10 gigabytes. “The increase will take effect over the next 24 hours,” the blog post reads. “We hope you all enjoy the little bump!”

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