Niche hardware maker PogoPlug have made a name for themselves delivering reliable and easy access to network attached storage, both on home and local business networks and across the Internet. Their latest creation is in line with a lot of their more web-centric competitors: PogoPlug Cloud. The free service will give anyone 5 gigabytes of free data storage – no PogoPlug hardware purchase needed – and the current Android app will be updated to access the storage natively.

The PogoPlug app has been available for some time, but previously it could only access drives, files and folders physically connected to your home network. Now the app is capable of retrieving up to 5 gigabytes of data, and instantly uploads photos and videos to its sharing service, a la Picasa. Video and music can be streamed from the storage space, and files or folders can be shared with your Google+ contacts. Free users get “only” five gigabytes, but you can expand your data storage for a monthly fee.

The cloud move puts PogoPlug in direct competition with DropBox, which is currently offering only 2GB of data storage to its free members. HTC customers get an expanded 5GB. At the present PogoPlug hasn’t revealed any integration software like Dropbox has, but then, committed users of PogoPlug’s hardware will tell you that its Network-attached storage devices fill that niche perfectly. We’ll be keeping a close eye on the cloud storage space, especially as Google itself pushes its users more and more towards on-demand file access. You can download the updated app now.