We all know companies like Google and Amazon love to tie you into their ecosystem with multiple services and products. Sometimes this can be quite annoying with a serious amount of bloatware installed on your devices. However, sometimes this can also be quite useful. Recently with the redesign of many Google products and services Google in particular is attempting to make their ecosystem more interactive and integrated. This is not just resigned to the much talked about Android 5.0 (Lollipop) operating system either but also their desktop services like Chrome OS.
A new feature announced today by Google for Chrome really does highlight how the integration of services can be a good and beneficial thing. The new add-on for Chrome is designed to integrate Drive in a much more functional way. Now you will be able to open files from Drive (in Chrome) directly through desktop applications. In short, from Drive you will be able to open Word documents in your downloaded Word application. Similarly, images can be opened via Photoshop (or other imagery software) again straight from Drive. Of course you might be thinking, well I could do that before? But you could only really open documents online immediately through the browser version of your application. This extension will allow the installed applications on your desktop to be opened via Drive and not applications that only work on your browser. Google notes comparable applications will include “advanced image and video editing software, accounting and tax programs, or 3D animation and design tools”.
Google do also note the service will be rolling out over the next few days although you can download and install the extension now by clicking here. Once installed to take advantage of the feature simply head to your Google Drive account (and make sure you are running the ‘new Google Drive), right click on a file and hit open with. At this point any desktop installed applications relative to the file should show up. Check out the brief video below for an example of how it will work. So what do you think? Do you like how well this feature will integrate your cloud based files with your installed desktop applications? Will you be using the extension?