27 November 2007

Announcing the GDrive: Google's online storage facility

Google has announced the release of a new online storage facility within the next few months. Rumours of this service - dubbed as the GDrive - began at the end of 2006, where information leaks revealed that an in-house storage system used by Google's employees to upload and share data will be offered as a new publicly available service.

This is not the first or only online storage solution by far. Yahoo! offers its users Yahoo! Briefcase, an online storage facility offering registered Yahoo! users 30MB of free online storage space and a web-based application for accessing and uploading their data. This, and other online storage solutions, have remained dormant for a number of reasons, including lack of transparency.

Google's new GDrive will try to tighten the gap between online storage and local hard disk storage. Along with offering a simple and efficient web interface, Google's GDrive will come with a desktop application which allows direct manipulation of online data, hoping to emulate the functions of a local hard drive.

The new product has raised the eyebrows of many competitors. Microsoft has already released a beta storage solution - Windows Live SkyDrive - offering clients 1GB free online storage space, although this beta solution lacks file editing features and there still is no paid version in existence.

Integrating Google's new GDrive service as a corporate solution is still an issue that raises many questions, mostly regarding the security of the storage device, its efficiency when uploading, downloading or editing files and a number of issues regarding file sharing and copyright.

What is next for the internet giant? If the GDrive flourishes, and Google starts housing most of the world's data, then maybe it's time for Google to start looking into developing an online operating system, one where it starts processing all of the world's computation - a GooOS?

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