Today, the file storage in the cloud has become very popular, either it may be the case of sending a large file via email or publishing the download link of a file in your personal blog. As we know there are thousands of options to store your files online but there are couple of nice alternatives which you may glad to choose. Google Drive and Dropbox are definitely two nice options to store your files online.

As you know both of them have their own pros and cons so choosing the best alternative is really very crucial. Dropbox provides only 2GB of free space while Google drive provides you 5 GB. Dropbox officially gives the direct download link to the files while Google drive does not. But there is a work around which we can do to get the direct download links to the files in Google Drive.

Direct Download link to your files

If you open your Google drive files in the default viewer the URL will be like:

https://docs.google.com/file/d/<KEY>/edit

But if you want to provide a direct download link, then you have to change the URL as follow.

http://drive.google.com/uc?export=download&id=<KEY>

Replace the key with your own key. There is one more URL type which you can also use:

http://drive.google.com/uc?id=<KEY>&e=download

For Example: Download-1 Download-2

Note: This will only work if you have shared the file as "public on the web".

Permanent link to an image

We generally embed an image in an HTML page with its permanent link. Now you can get the permanent links to your Google drive images and can also embed them in HTML.

By default your Google drive image URL is:

https://docs.google.com/file/d/<KEY>/edit

The permanent URL which you can use to embed it in HTML is:

http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=<KEY>

For Example:

Above image is currently present in Google drive. It has been embedded in this page with its permanent URL. Above image will work only if you have shared the image as "public in the web".

You can also use following URL type

http://drive.google.com/uc?id=<KEY>&e=view