Mountain View, California — Relentlessly striving to embellish its seamless integration between their various services, and now the latest integration between two of Google’s biggest products is making it easier for consumers and business customers alike to share large files. The search engine giant is making it easier for users to attach Google Drive files into Gmail messages by allowing up to 10GB file sizes when sending an email, as long as the files are stored in your Google Drive, stating that the feature allows for attachments that are 400 times larger than that of Gmail users previously could have used.
The web giant disclosed the new capability on its blog on Tuesday, stating that it is integrating its cloud storage service Google Drive into Gmail, a move that will let users insert and send files up to 10GB. To put it in perspective, that’s 400 times larger than what you can send as a traditional attachment, Google said.
What is probably the most convenient aspect about this feature, is that holiday photos, cute videos of the kids, and epic book proposals can all easily turn into file attachments too large for your email service to handle–unless you are sending them via Gmail.
Going forward, Gmail product manager Phil Sharp described in a blog post on the Google Enterprise blog that these files are practically stacked up in the cloud, which makes it easier to both send these files and ensure that the recipients have the most up-to-date version.
With this latest update, it is now possible to send such a large file via email because Google is smartly adding support for Drive, its cloud-storage service, to Gmail. Hence, if you are using the “new compose experience” on Gmail, you will see a new button which allows you to take advantage of this new trick. In order to attach a file from Google Drive, a user need only click on “Insert files using Drive” icon in the Compose box and then select the file from a drop down menu.
“Like a smart assistant, Gmail will also double-check that your recipients all have access to any files you are sending,” Sharp wrote.
So, whenever you send a file from Google Drive that is not shared with everyone, you will be prompted with the option to change the files sharing settings without leaving Gmail. The feature perfectly functions like Gmail’s forgotten attachment detector, and will also work with Drive links pasted directly into emails, he added.
Besides, the 10GB capacity should be particularly interesting to Google Apps customers that might want to adopt this for more in-depth collaboration on projects. Sending such large files also presumes that the user is paying for extra Google Drive space as the cutoff for free cloud storage is 5GB.
With the temptation escalating from MB to GB (Gmail currently maxes out at 25MB), this feature will be rolling out to Gmail users over the next few days. Anyone interested in taking advantage of it will need to opt-in (if they have not already) to the updated Gmail compose experience, which also recently debuted.