Many technology news portals and non-specialized media have recently been talking about the supposed closure of Google Drive.
This rumor that one of the most widely used cloud storage services in the world, and a crucial component in the Google ecosystem, especially Gmail, would soon be a thing of the past, has caused quite a bit of concern among users of that tool. .
It would not be the first time that Google has declared the death of a product or service that does not conform to the company’s plans, and the list of services that passed away is long: Reader, Wave, Talk, Picasa, Google+, And a long etcetera.
Along with this rumor comes suggestions of services that could replace such a loss: Dropbox, OneDrive from Microsoft, Mega, Box, Terabox.
But no, Google Drive will not disappear. What will happen is that Google will stop providing support for the Google Drive desktop application in Windows 8/8.1, Windows 10 32-bit and Windows Server 2012. This decision had already been announced previously. Does this mean that users of these operating systems will completely lose access to Google Drive? Here’s what Google says about it on the Google Drive for PC release notes webpage:
“In August 2023, we will stop supporting Drive on Windows 8/8.1, Windows Server 2012, and all 32-bit versions of Windows. To avoid service interruptions, Windows users should upgrade to Windows 10 (64-bit) or later by August 2023. Users using an unsupported version of Windows will be able to access Drive through a supported browser ».
In short, Google will withdraw support for the desktop application on some operating systems whose life cycles have already ended for some time. However, affected users will still be able to use the Google Drive web interface without issue.