Google cuts out the middleman, releases 'Save to Drive' feature for Chrome

The Google Drive team on Tuesday announced a new Chrome extension called "Save to Drive," which ties browser activity directly into the user's Google Drive cloud storage account and eliminates the need for third-party extensions to provide the functionality.

Prior to today's release, an extension from the prestigious MIT going by the name "save to drive" was available. Now, Google has borrowed the name and made it available in the Chrome Web Store. The search giant takes the concept a lot further though.

You can right-click on an image or link to save the file to your Google Drive account and this extension puts a Drive icon up in your menu bar. Clicking it will take a snapshot of the entire web page. The experience may be a bit strange the first time you try it. When we tested it, our browser seemingly went out of control, erratically scrolling down the page on its own.

Once that is done, a prompt to choose a folder to save the file appears. Upon first use, you will need to "grant access" for the extension to access your Google Drive account. At that point the entire web page will be saved as a .PNG file.

According to Josh Hudgins, Google Drive Product Manager, "There are also a few new ways to work with images you’re already storing in Drive. You can now zoom by scrolling or using the new ‘fit to page’ and 100% buttons. And if you have something to say about a specific part of an image, you can select a region and add a comment to it."