The Wall St. Journal ran a B1 story this morning about the forthcoming online storage service from Google. Call it GDrive, call it Platypus, call it My Stuff - the vast majority of tech bloggers have called it old news. I disagree. I think there's a lot of potential for Google's online storage to be a game changing product.
It appears that the GDrive will sit on your desktop and sync automatically selected files automatically with online storage. Those files will be accessible from the desktop and browser at least as easily as they would be were they on your own hard drive.
Here's three ways I think this could be big.
The difference between local and online storage in this case will not just be the absence of space limitations, the data will also be accessible to the nearly infinite computing power of Google. Though it's a nontraditional use of the world, I think Henry Blodget is on to something important when he writes this morning about GDrive that "'cloud computing' represents a paradigm shift similar in magnitude to the one that ushered in the PC age." Both for individual users and in anonymous aggregate, there's magic that's possible when our data is so accessible to unlimited processing power.
To say that all our docs will be open to cross-application search, as the WSJ reported, is just the beginning. You want to talk about top-down semantic analysis, for example? There may be no better way to do it with our files, or to use our files in the service of ontology creation, than by putting them in the hands of Google. There are countless other online storage options, but who among them are actively chewing on the data they are storing? I'm willing to bet that Google will and will do a better job of it than anyone else. It's frightening and exciting at the same time.
The story today includes some of the first discussion of mobile access to GDrive files. Seamless syncing of our data assets between desktop access and mobile access could change the mobile landscape in a big way. Combine this with what could be a flourishing ecosystem of mobile applications ala Android, and perhaps (to allow myself some optimism) the promise of OpenSocial, and we've got some powerful new mobile social networking possibilities. Add some old documents from a previous job to my LinkedIn profile, from my phone on the run? No problem.
Do all of the above, on a plane. Someday Google will notice that I've got a trip out of town scheduled on GCal and offer to sync up my recent GDrive files marked "work" to Gears for the plane trip. Especially if I've been searching a lot on locations far away on Google Maps lately.
The Gears functionality of quickly making files local and then syncing them back up when you return online is going to be a big deal. Zoho Writer's Gears offline version released yesterday is just one example. Combine Gears with effectively infinite storage and computing power and you've got a lot of possibilities.
It's easy to be cynical about the details coming from the Wall St. Journal this morning. It's easy wonder whether Google will ever bring its storage product to market, whether it can be trusted given the number of times its own company blogs have been hacked and whether it's even a good idea given the near omniscience the company will soon possess. I believe, though, that important new information is coming out about the GDrive and the product will play a fundamentally different roll in our lives than existing online storage products purport to.
Comments
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The GDrive concept will get interesting when Google/Apple/Microsoft start mirroring your identity from your home computer to the cloud.
Then, when you accessed your data/identify from alternate devices, you could be offered the subset of services and data that were appropriate to the device.
I think we're years away from this getting interesting, though. This makes me wonder why Apple isn't offering a real online option for Time Machine backups - that could be leveraged into something interesting.
Posted by: James Lewin | November 27, 2007 9:47 AM
I'm looking forward to this service as well. If Google can create an online file storage that is as elegant and usable as its other products, it will be a boon. If the service also ensures that my data will be replicated across data centers I'll be even more enthusiastic - it will certainly be more reliable than storing all of my files on a single hard drive in my house.
Posted by: Jon Foreman | November 27, 2007 10:06 AM
I think this is very exciting stuff. Maybe now the network truly will be the computer. Ubiquitous, always ready access to the grid node called "Khurt Williams'.
Posted by: Khurt Williams | November 27, 2007 12:36 PM
I just wonder if we're starting to see the death of the local hard drive. I know that computers are coming with ever more storage nowadays but it just seems that media streaming and online storage are going to start to take over. It's just so much more convenient to have your content stored online than on a local drive. I wonder whether we'll be allowed to store music.
Posted by: Charlie | November 27, 2007 2:54 PM
I hope that the GDrive will become a reality...But I'm still waiting.
Posted by: David Mackey | November 27, 2007 4:02 PM
Box.net Blog - If the Web is the platform, then Box is the file system
http://blog.box.net/?p=115
I think Box.net has launched more or less the same service a couple weeks ago. It could be tried as a preview of GDrive.
Box.net - OpenBox
http://www.box.net/info/openbox
Posted by: Alan | November 27, 2007 5:22 PM
I agree. A good storage solution that allows proper access to your files from al kinds of platforms could be very beneficial to us all. The current storage providers don't offer that.
Regards
Servaas
Posted by: Servaas | November 28, 2007 4:23 AM
these storage devices are really beneficial for it personals as well as common people..........
Posted by: Voip Mobile Phone | November 28, 2007 4:45 AM
YDRIVE (unrelated to YHOO) is set to debut 2008.1.1, will be appable and supports OpenSocial (yeah, that’s what OpenSocial called Persistence)... more by January.
Posted by: YDRIVE | November 28, 2007 9:10 AM
Many people have blindly believed Google will dominate the Internet industry. which is not really the case. In fact, out of the search market, Google has not been successful. This doesn't hurt for Google to get a lot of media exposure. Taking for example, GDrive was rumored for years... but the real online storage king is always a small innovator, not a big behemoth like Google. I recommend everybody to try DriveHQ Online Storage and Online Backup service (www.drivehq.com). I feel the usability, the group and sub-group file sharing, the advanced folder synchronization features are really killer apps. Even if Google launches its online storage service, it will be too late to catch up.
Posted by: nyit | November 28, 2007 6:13 PM