14 DAY TRIAL // Google has rolled out a few very interesting features which should prove quite a boon to Docs users. The Google Documents List API has been expanded enabling third-party applications to upload any file to any Google account.
In practice, this means that you'll be able to back up files from your computer in Google Docs automatically, Dropbox-style, provided some developer implements this, though it probably won't be long now.
"Over the next few days we will be rolling out an expansion to the feature set of the Google Documents List API. Third-party applications may now upload files of any type to any Google Account. Previously, this was only possible for Google Apps for Business users," Rob Wyrick, from the Google Documents List API Team, announced.
Google did allow Google Apps for Business users to upload files via third party apps, using the Documents List API, but regular users had no such luck.
With this expansion, there should be a big increase in the number of apps built for Google Docs and Google's cloud storage becomes a much more appealing solution for a variety of tasks.
The most obvious one is backup, having a small app run in the background and backup the files and folders you want to the Google cloud could prove quite useful.
Granted, there are plenty of cloud backup solutions out there, but Google has a couple of advantages. For one, it's cheap, Google only offers 1 GB of free storage, but additional space is $5 a year for 20 GB, $20 for 80 GB and so on.
And then there's the implied trust users put in Google. While there are reasons to be cautious even if it's a big company, or perhaps exactly because it's a big company, the Google cloud is one of the most reliable and secure available to regular users.
Other than backup, the new capabilities could also be useful to applications needing a place to store data accessible over the web, Google already uses Docs for Chrome sync data for example.
There are a couple of other features available in the latest update to the Documents List API and, overall, developers should be quite please about the new capabilities.