GDrive: Google's Next Step !

dhanesh

Mar 8 2006, 06:54 AM

Woah .. Just found this info while browsing ... Google is planning to provide its users with a GDrive, from what i know , GDrive is a sort of a Network Drive where your files would be placed on a Server and NOT on your Computer. This would probably slove storage problems for most of us. But how much is Google going to offer ? 2GB sounds "ok" lol,what if 5GB per user is alloted ?

Now that gets me to the same question i asked in the other post about google. Where does all this space come from ?

QUOTE

"With infinite storage, we can house all user files, including: emails, web history, pictures, bookmarks, etc and make it accessible from anywhere (any device, any platform, etc). We already have efforts in this direction in terms of GDrive, GDS, Lighthouse, but all of them face bandwidth and storage constraints today." — excerpt from Analyst Day presentation notes.

Lets just wait and see what google has to offer in the comming months.

ZDnet.com
Greg's Blogger Page
Neowin.net

Regards
Dhanesh.

pyost

Mar 8 2006, 08:54 AM

Hm, I think I've heard something about that before.. Not sure what it was, but as far as I know, there is a program (not made by Google) that allows you to connect to you e-mail storage space and put files there. But I don't think it was approved by Google. If this really happened, that would be great. Even better if those files were available for download. That means no more rapidshare and megaupload!

finaldesign

Mar 8 2006, 09:22 AM

Well, for now we have pages.google.com, a service for creating web pages. It's unusable for most of users because of heavy demand no new users can signup. Anyway that GDrive is just a logical event after Pages.google. I mean, they offer free webpage generator, so there must be a place to store that pages, right?

Very soon we will have Google's hosting, that will compete with geocities and similar (oldest and first) free webhosts...

marretas

Mar 8 2006, 09:47 AM

Yeah i heard it this morning, well this guys doesn't stop evoluting. Well someday everything is GOOGLE. Heheh

sparx

Mar 8 2006, 10:04 AM

Providing space is good enough; what this service will depend most critically on is two varied but crucial points -

1. The bandwidth available to users to upload their files.

2. More importantly, the willingness of users to trust Google to take care of their files. Now there will be people who trust Google implicitly and those of us who believe that the only "eyes" who ought to see my files are mine alone. Never mind that no human will be crawling the content. After all, there are thousands of users of Google Desktop! What's important to note is Google's earning model - it has grown from an internet search company to an advertising behemoth. That's where the cash flows in... AdSense AdWords. The best way for them to earn is to go thru the content provided by the end-users and display relevant adverts.

----------------

GMailDrive is the shell extension (unsupported and NOT recommended by GMail!) that we're talking about. It allows a user to upload files to his/her GMail account, but no hosting possible!

szupie

Mar 8 2006, 12:23 PM

dhanesh: the article on ZDNet had given some ideas on where they get the money to buy the storage space. It might be a paid service for accounts with more space, and they could also sell backup DVDs.

I wonder if this GDrive would make your files public, like they would be on a shared network. And if their drives crash, would they attempt to recover the files?
But this may all be just a rumor. It's so secretive that the Google Blog doesn't even talk about it.

dhanesh

Mar 8 2006, 05:47 PM

QUOTE(szupie @ Mar 8 2006, 04:23 PM)

dhanesh: the article on ZDNet had given some ideas on where they get the money to buy the storage space. It might be a paid service for accounts with more space, and they could also sell backup DVDs.

I did read that on the site, but If the GDrive is paid then how are they managing the GMail accounts, the Website Accounts, isnt there a limit. I mean agreed that they ask u to pay for the space you need, but to get more users first they r going to go on beta invitations like gmail, then when they are shure about the service .. they would make it paid, but we all know that NOTHING in google is completely paid, a part of the GDrive will be free for users, say 500MB for free ? even if u count 500MB .. and all those free signups ... its going to be a crazy storage show.

The part about .. If users trust Google with their files rather points towards the 5% users of google services. If you didnt trust GMail .. would you create an account ? Ofcourse GMail can access all ur personal mails

so when GDrive comes out, i dunt think users would have a problem with uploading password encrypted files. Rather, insted use the PC as ur personal storage Machine and GDrive as a backup for the rest. (music .. movies

)

GMailDrive was a good 3rd party addition to the GMail service, but i guess google didnt want users to take due advantage. I used GMD for quiet sumtime , but later removed it .. cause 10MB per file was a little annoying for me

... i need moreee n moooree GBs and TBs .. my precioussss

Regards
Dhanesh.

Jeigh

Mar 8 2006, 06:14 PM

My guess is they'll just make the space you have now useable as a drive, seems like it'd be the simplest at least to start with.

I know it'll be nice. I used those other frontends for awhile but having various limitations was annoying (no file above 10megs for some, glitchy for others) it just wasn't worth it. If they make a solid GDrive I'll probably make use of it.

By use, however, I'll useit for not so important things heh. With all the controversy over privacy with gmail... I can't see me storing much sensitive data on it. I mean I don't -need- to use it for anything anyways (I have ftps... thumb drives...) but it would ne convenient for random files that are inconsequential. But yea, I think I'm in the 'lacking trust' camp right now. Not so much because I mistrust google, but because I know how certain governments can often get what they want

Gotta say though, I love that people found out about this first because google posted webpages or info that they didn't mean to... you'd think by now they would have a good handle on this intarwebses thing

qwijibow

Mar 9 2006, 03:13 AM

My questions......

1) what level of access... are we talking about somthing like a SAMBA drive, or NFS drive...
in other words..... can i re-format the file system ( for example, using an encrpyting device mapper... Possable oon NFS style protocols, but not SAMBA )

2) is this going to be like google Eart, in the sence that its a Windows only thingamajig....

Ventorms

Mar 16 2006, 07:01 PM

Right you must be the dumbest person to do that if it comes out. Gmail has already a very strange license agreement, it could be changed any time and than because you accepted once you'll automaticly acccept it again.. that means that if they change it to have the right to read your emails you'll automaticly accept it...oops not good at all. And theres some other strange stuff going on with the CIA.. Google bought the company that makes Google Maps at the moment from the CIA. There is a rumour going on that they might have traded it for acces to Gmail accounts to check email on terrorist stuff. Well I think this is going a bit to far, because there is completly no proof for this kind of actions but anyway I don't think I'll use it, thats for sure!

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BitShift

May 10 2006, 12:05 AM

QUOTE(finaldesign @ Mar 8 2006, 04:22 AM)

Very soon we will have Google's hosting, that will compete with geocities and similar (oldest and first) free webhosts...

You can access ur files on google pages

i uploaded a few exe's to my google pages and then i use my main google pages address and just put the exe names after the \ and it would download

RoKeR

Mar 19 2006, 09:13 AM

Wouldnt that be great?
By the way... there is a Fire Fox extension know as GSpace. It's almost the same as FTP programs.. you can store your files there... but cant offer them for download to anyone else.!!

nightfox

Mar 19 2006, 05:37 AM

QUOTE

Where does all this space come from ?

You don't think they have 2 servers with 500, 512 Terabyte hard drives in them, do you?

Of course not! They have like 200,000 (I *think*, it could be 20,000) servers running. Some of them are web servers, some are mail servers for Gmail, some are the search servers, some are DNS servers, and others are for whatever projects Google has going on. Gmail can give 500 gigs to each user if they wanted.... but that is a lot of servers right there! Plus, don't expect to go to the local Google data center either. For security and preformance world wide, they've got servers hidden all over.

That's the story for the servers... oh, I almost forgot! How can they keep adding new servers so quickly? Their servers are just normal PCs with custom software. That's how Google did it in the past and it is probably how they're going to keep doing it.

Now personally, I can't wait for "Gdrive" because I currently use that software that turns your Gmail account into file storage. It would be nice to upload files LARGER than 10 MB, great for sending those highly critical large files I use

hahaha

I do find it very annoying to have to watch file sizes... "9.9" will just make it past, but something that is 10.1 won't... I mean, come on! Even SquirrelMail in cPanel allows me to send 50 MB attachments! Of course, I'd never use the mail server for file storage...

that's what other services are for!

lol

[N]F

Kushika

Mar 18 2006, 12:53 PM

Google is a reliable service, but with those rumour floating around that I don't think I'll use it. Besides, if the server breaks or deletes my files then well, I might have just used a bunch of CD RWs instead.