Gdrive rumours resurface

Stephen Withers
Wednesday, 28 November 2007 01:26

Business IT - Technology

Longstanding rumours that Google will offer a generic online storage facility have been given fresh life by a report in the Wall Street Journal that the service could be launched in a few months time.

Given the company's existing Gmail and Picasa offerings for email and photo storage, plus the way Google Docs files are stored, it isn't a big stretch to imagine a generalised offering with a few gigabytes for free and more available for a fee.

Online storage with a web interface is one thing, but it is much more useful if it can also be used as if it was a normal hard drive, and that, according to the WSJ's sources, is what Google is trying to do. Models for this approach can be seen in the iDisk component of Apple's .Mac service, or AOL's Xdrive.com.

Software that uses a Gmail account for file storage does exist, but its use may be treated by Google as "abnormal usage" resulting in the account being temporarily disabled.

Microsoft's Windows Live SkyDrive service is in beta and provides 1G of free storage accessible via a browser. Microsoft Office Live Workspace - designed for the online storage of Office documents and for synchronising Outlook tasks, events and contacts - is also in beta.

Despite its flexibility, online storage does have some shortcomings. The main one is access speed, which is limited by the user's connection. The widespread use of asymmetrical services such as ADSL and cable means uploading large files is a tedious business. But a fast Internet connection does not necessarily mean rapid access to online storage, as iDisk users outside North America will testify.

The trick that Google needs to pull off is finding a scheme for online storage that presents itself as a hard drive regardless of the operating system - Windows, Mac OS X or Linux - that happens to be running on the computer the customer is using at the time.