CloudGOO’s New App Turns All Your Cloud Storage Accounts Into One Big, Combined Drive

CloudGOO, a newly launched Android application with something of a silly name, offers a way for you to smush together all your cloud-based file storage accounts to form one big cloud drive in the sky. That is, the app aggregates your cloud drive accounts into one mobile interface, then uses that space as if it were one drive for things like automatic uploads of photos, videos, music, and documents.

The new service was launched just days ago by Berlin-based developer Jared Preston, who previously spent a few years in Seattle working for Microsoft on the Windows Live platform, followed by some time at Deutsche Telekom.

He explains that unlike other platforms, such as Jolicloud for example, which attempted to aggregate a user’s web services under one roof, the idea with CloudGOO is not to have you navigate between your drives or media spaces using the app. Instead, he says, “you simply access and use your stuff, no matter where it is stored.”

“Theoretically, you could just hook up as many Google Drives, Dropbox, etc., as you wanted, to create a total space available for you to use. CloudGOO can then be set to ‘automatic upload’ and would just utilize the space available,” says Preston. “You would not have to worry about managing the space, just using it.”

cloudgoo

Currently, the app supports cloud services including Google Drive, OneDrive (previously SkyDrive), Dropbox, Box, SugarSync, and Amazon’s Cloud Drive. To get started, you connect your accounts, and the app tells you how much storage you have available on each, and how much is already used in total. You can then fine-tune your settings to specify which file types (e.g. photos, videos, documents, etc.) you want to back up, and whether those files should be backed only over Wi-Fi.

You can also choose to let CloudGOO decide which online destination to use for each upload, so it can optimize your drive space utilization, or you can specify where each file type should be stored on an individual basis.

A basic user interface lets you access your content from the app, by tapping on big icons for photos, music, videos, and documents. From there, you can view your files, quickly share them on other social services or email, or copy them over to another cloud storage account.

Support for offline access is also available, and you can configure the cache size the app should use.

CloudGOO is currently a paid download in Google Play, and Preston says an iOS version is in Apple’s review queue now.

The nice thing about this app is that it lets you easily take advantage of the free space online storage space cloud providers give away, in hopes of hooking you into becoming a paying user. For example, Google Drive gives you up to 15 GB for free these days, while Dropbox offers another 2 GB of free space to start, with the ability to earn up to 16 GB through referrals. (Ahem.)

But until now, it’s not been convenient to combine your accounts to maximize the free offerings, which is why many users simply convert to paying customers as their need for online storage grows. Or else, they’re like me, and have somehow managed to sign up for accounts with all the providers, and now have no idea where to go to find the files they’ve uploaded all over the web. CloudGOO (yes, I know, that name) solves this problem, too, and at 99 cents it’s well worth the download.