Learning Objective: This is a news reading and comprehension and conversation class. At the end of the session, the participants are expected to be able to practice reading properly, enhance comprehension and recall and answer the questions about the article.


Story Proper

Google has entered the market for offering online storage space. Their new service, called Google Drive, will be in direct competition with rival cloud storage services like Dropbox, Apple's iCloud and Microsoft's SkyDrive. The search giant will offer 5GB (gigabytes) of storage for free for those wishing to keep their photos, documents and other files online. Keeping things in the cloud means users can access their files from any computer anywhere in the world, as long as it has Internet access. At the top end, Google will offer 16TB (terabytes) of space – at a price of $799.99 a month. Sixteen terabytes is sufficient to store 16,000 movies. For most people, the free 5GB option will be more than enough space.

Google senior vice-president of apps Sundar Pichai said the launch of Drive was an important step for the company. He wrote on a blog post: "Drive is a central place where you can create, share, collaborate and keep all of your stuff.…You can take all your data, regardless of which device you're on, and make it seamlessly available to you." Some industry insiders believe Google's entry into the cloud storage market could shake it up. Richard Edwards, an analyst at the research firm Ovum, said Google's move could stir Facebook into action. "Facebook doesn't have a cloud service but this may prompt it into an acquisition," he said. He added: "If Facebook was to buy Dropbox, that would be a game-changer."



Activity Proepr


1. ONLINE STORAGE: What is it all about?


2. CHAT: Choose and talk about any topic in the list below.

entered the market / online storage / rival / giant / access files / enough space / important step / collaborate / seamlessly / shake it up / acquisitions / game-changers


3. STORAGE: How best can we store things?

How to store them?---------- Pros and Cons

Digital photos
Paper photos
Books
Music
Passport
Memories


4. CLOUD: Students A strongly believe the cloud is the best thing to happen to storing digital photos, music, movies, documents, etc.; Students B strongly believe otherwise. Who do you agree with?


5. DATA: What's most important to you?

music
photos
games
documents
passwords
apps
movies / videos
e-mails



"Online activities, the mp3 and printable handouts are available for this lesson at http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com"