title: Cloud Storage services, what, how and which?
body: <p>In some ways I guess you could say I'm creating something similar to the iOS app 'Vine'. A social network letting users upload videos for others to watch. My entire project is pretty much ready, I'm using a database service called <a href="http://www.parse.com" rel="noreferrer">Parse</a>, but there's not much storage there, and if you want to scale it up, it gets pricey. I have figured I can use the database I already have, and having the sql-table for "Videos" have an URL-column linking to the actual video file. I have been looking for data storage services, and found Google's 'Cloud Storage'. </p>
  
  <p>What I'm really looking for, if possible, is something like this use case:</p>
  
  <ol>
  <li>Client app has a video ready to upload.</li>
  <li>Uploads video-file to <code>some-cloud-service.com/myCompany/videoNameID.mp4</code></li>
  <li>Store this URL in the URL-field of a 'video-object' in the database.</li>
  <li>When other users are fetching a list of videos, they get a collection of names and URLs</li>
  <li>When the user wants to play a certain video, fetch it from the URL in the table.</li>
  </ol>
  
  <p>I have been thinking I can use cloud storage as a place to upload and access files for my app. I've been looking through the API and documentation for Google's Cloud Storage, but there's so much in there I have no use for, and I don't understand most of it. I'm starting to think "Cloud Storage" isn't what I think it is. I simply need a place to upload potentially huge amounts of large files, directly from an iOS-app (and website later). The data storage service Parse offers is perfect, but very limited in size. I know it has the potential of getting expensive. From reading the prices of <a href="https://cloud.google.com/pricing/cloud-storage" rel="noreferrer">this</a> google service, it looked both cheap and exactly what I need, but I can't understand how, if possible, I should use it to directly upload a file using my "credentials", and receiving an URL in return for where the file ended up.</p>
  
  <p>Can I use Google's Cloud Storage for this? Or something else? Or have I completely misunderstood how to use Cloud Storage?</p>