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If you don’t get just a little excited whenever you hear the words “Gmail” and “integration” in the same sentence, I don’t know what does it for you. If you have upgraded to Gmail’s new compose experience (which I am a huge fan of) you can start sending files as big as 10 GB directly into an email without even exiting Gmail. Simply click the Google Drive icon at the bottom of your window as you are writing your message. The potential for sharing files this size instantly via email is palpable. A full HD movie, hundreds of songs, ebooks, and more are all easy to send to friends and family. When you think about all the amazing innovations that have surrounded how we use the internet. Its kind of surprising that it took this long. I know many people who still carry USB drives or SD cards around with them to store their data. You have to imagine that the people responsible for creating the internet silently shed a tear every time you load a file onto a thumb drive so that you can take it to another device so you can print or edit it. File sharing, in its purest form, is the foundation of the internet. Welcome to the past everyone.
The beautiful thing about this feature is that Gmail doesn’t have to actually transfer this file across their servers. Because Google Drive and Gmail are both cloud-based services, sending a file of any size is as simple as giving access to the correct users no matter where in the world they happen to be.
Are you worried about sending a file to someone who doesn’t have permission to access it? Don’t be! Gmail will check to make sure that your permissions are correct before it lets you send the email. This feature also works with Drive links pasted directly into an email. This is just the first of what is sure to be a lot of amazing integration between Gmail, Drive and Google’s other services. Personally, I’m still waiting for Google Voice, Google+ Messenger, and Google Talk to
become one unified service, but I won’t hold my breath. The potential for crossover technologies between Google’s plethora of offerings is nearly limitless. What is the Google integration you are anticipating the most? Let us know in the comments below.