$3 Billion?

Kara Swisher reports that on the financial side of things, it looks like the latest deal would include Microsoft paying several billion dollars to Yahoo upfront to take over its search advertising business. If this deal goes through, Swisher reports, Yahoo would also take over Microsoft's display ads business. Concrete numbers are still hard to come by, but 27/7 Wall Street reports that Yahoo would get $3 billion upfront and "will get 11% of the revenue that its searches provide after traffic acquisition costs in each of the first two years. In the third year, that figure would go to 90%."

As always, we will keep a close eye on this story as it unfolds. For now, there are still rumors, but they seem to be quite substantial, and a deal between Microsoft and Yahoo (though not a merger of the two companies) would definitely make sense at this point.

You can already store your photos on Picasa Web Albums (though the amount of free storage is very limited). However, once you pay Google, your Gmail storage and Picasa storage limits become one - so Google clearly has at least some unified infrastructure for doing some of the back-end work in place already. According to a document (PDF) unearthed by Google is Watching You, that is exactly what Google is planning to do with the GDrive.

Google has enough clout to take online storage mainstream. While this directly benefits Google, it will also benefit the cloud storage industry in general, as the big name behind the product will drive up the general comfort level with online storage.

There are, of course, numerous small and medium sized-companies that offer online storage in some form or another. The smartest ones integrate directly with your desktop, so that you can seamlessly move data between the cloud and your own machine. A large number of other services also offer backup services, though without directly integrating this with your desktop. While all of these offerings are interesting, none have really made it into the mainstream yet.

What the GDrive is Up Against

Google's biggest competitor in this business is most likely going to be Microsoft, which has just started its push for cloud computing and storage. With its Live Drive, Microsoft offers 25GB of storage to all of its millions of Windows Live users. But Microsoft wouldn't be Microsoft if it didn't also offer ten different online storage solutions that can't speak to each other. You can also use LiveSync to transfer data between your own computers, Live Mesh for syncing and online storage, and Office Live Workspace for managing and storing office documents. And these are just Microsoft's consumer products in this space.

If Google gets the GDrive right, it will be able to offer one single online storage solution that does all of what Microsoft's plethora of tools does, but through one unified user interface and service. If the descriptions of the GDrive that have surfaced over the last week turn out to be true, then Google wants to offer a solution for all your files, including documents, photos, and (interestingly) music.

If Google can also offer solutions to access these files on mobile phones (besides Android) and if it offers a good integration with the desktop, then it could surely become the company that takes cloud storage into the mainstream.

Now we just have to wait for the actual release of the GDrive...

Was MemoryUp a "Rogue" Application?

Whether or not MemoryUp actually destroyed personal data and spammed people's contacts, as it was said to have done, is unknown. However, it would have been difficult for it to have accomplished those things. The app required no special privileges to install, so it's hard to imagine how it could have accessed the data and email addresses or how it could have sent out the spam. Also, for what it's worth, the company behind the app adamantly denies the claims. Says Robert Lee, chief technical associate for eMobiStudio, "We are very disturbed by these reports. Whatever damage is out there has not been done by our product."

...Or a Victim of Community Backlash?

The truth about this application may be that it just wasn't very good, not that it was dangerous malware. Many comments about the app in the Android store (prior to the app's removal) and in the forums weren't about losing data but about how the app wasn't worth installing because it provided no real value to the user.

What's even more apparent, though, in reading through the posts and comments about MemoryUp, is that many members of the Android community seemed to have a grudge against the app's creator, Peter Liu, whose drive-by advertising in forum postings got under people's skin. "How many times are you going to advertise this on here?" wrote one user. Later, others bragged and joked about running the "Memory folks out of town." "Peter needs to get a life," said yet another user.

It stands to reason that a handful of Android community members decided to disparage the application to get back at the app's developer...but something like that could never be proven, only suspected.

Yet, if that was the case, those people inadvertently ended up hurting Android in the process. By raising questions about the safety and security of Android platform, they helped to spread "FUD" (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) about this new mobile OS. Even worse, these rumors make the iPhone's closed and "by approval only" model look like the safer, smarter choice when it comes to phones. But as anyone involved in the open movement will tell you, that is not necessarily the case.

Why would you like a Google Drive service? For the presumably very low price point (free?), for the ease of backing up important data or for the potential integration of stored data into other powerful Google services? There's lots of reasons to perk up your ears when rumors like this pop up.

GMail As Possible Home for GDrive

Gmail Product Manager Todd Jackson told Webware last week that:

"We know people's file sizes are getting bigger. They want to share their files, keep them in the cloud, and not worry about which computer they're on. Google wants to be solving these problems."

That's all well and good, and we know that Gmail already does a lot of storage. It could be the home from which a GDrive is spun out. But is there anything more solid than that?

Picassa Hints

Sterling also points to coverage last night on Google watchdog site Google Blogoscoped where a screenshot from Picassa offers the option to upload photos to "Google Web Drive." The conversation in comments on that post is quite interesting, as well, including a mention of what looks to us like a possible placeholder for storing photo albums in Google Docs and a mock-up screenshot of what one Blogoscoped reader thinks the GDrive product could look like.

Security Concerns

For as long as Google has been rumored to be building a GDrive product, there have been concerns about how solid the company's control over user data security is. From all too common cases of "oops, your GMail account vanished" to more than one of the company's own official blogs being hacked, there's something a little worrisome about the security of a Google Drive.

Just as important a set of concerns though could be around Google's incredible control over so much of our data already. The company has its fingers in so many pies that it's hard to believe it warrants more trust, just on principle.

It's a vexing situation. The potential awesomeness of Google services is incredible. The actual delivered value of new services is often disappointing. The company has committed relatively few offenses against propriety with its incredible power (China notwithstanding) but the potential for abuse is incredible.

Do you want a Google Drive? Do you believe one's really coming? What would you like it to do?

If Apple is really working on this, then we expect them to release it through a similar annual subscription model as Mobile Me. Chances are that Apple will also use the same SproutCore JavaScript framework it used for MobileMe. When Apple first discussed SproutCore, some already assumed that the natural next step for Apple would be a productivity app built around this framework.

Will the MobileMe Disaster Repeat Itself?

Given what a disaster the release of Apple's Mobile Me online email and calendaring applications was, we can only hope that Apple, if it really decides to go this route, will have learned from that experience.

A Taste of the Cloud iWork: 280 Slides

If you want a taste of what these online apps could look like, have a look at 280slides, a Keynote-like online presentation app that was developed by two former Apple engineers.

Rumors Gone Wild

Specifically, Noughton cites a rumor that Michelle Obama, wife of US presidential candidate Barack Obama, was caught on video tape hurling a racial epithet about white people. The rumor started on Larry Johnson's No Quarter blog. His source? "Someone in touch with a senior Republican" who knows that a "major McCain backer has a copy of the tape." Later, Johnson says he's learned more about the tape via "five separate sources who have spoken directly with people who have seen the tape."

Despite the clear lack of a credible source, the rumor had serious legs. From friend of a friend of a friend hearsay, to a mention on Fox News as "credible buzz," to Obama being asked about it by a reporter from the well-respectd McClatchy News Service. "So the story whirls around the echo-chamber of the paranoid, right-wing blogosphere, with the odd whisk from Fox News reporters, until it reaches hysteria," says Noughton. And though no tape has surfaced, damage has potentially been done.

Therein, perhaps, lies a danger in putting too much credence in the blogosphere and citizen journalism. At times having untrained eyes on the ground can be invaluable at getting the story reported, and sometimes citizen journos can beat the mainstream press to a breaking story. But when your sources are relying on rumors heard from friends, lending credence to those rumors by mentioning them in the mainstream press is toxic.

We've seen rumors run wild on the tech end have real-world consequences as well. Last May when Engadget erroneously reported that Apple was planning to delay Leopard and the iPhone, the company lost $4 billion in market cap in an afternoon. Even though Engadget quickly updated its headline and story when Apple denied the rumors and said their source (a memo) was a fake, the story was frozen in time on Techmeme and in people's RSS readers with the wrong information.

The Solution

With the rise of Twitter, mobile video blogging, and other tools of citizen journalism, the news cycle is now seconds. With news rolling in non-stop 24 hours per day, the continuous, Twitterized cycle doesn't leave much time for fact checking -- speed matters. But that's not the future that Noughton hopes for.

When rumors published and repeated without checking the facts can have far-reaching consequences -- like influencing voters in a US presidential election, or knocking $4 billion off a company's market cap -- accuracy should count for something. Noughton provides a moral for the tale of the phantom Michelle Obama tape: "If confronted with online rumours, investigate first, report later."