Philipp Lenssen at Google Blogoscoped received and attempted to install a leaked copy of the GDrive client being used by Google employees. He was unable to login after installing (our belief is it must be used from an approved IP address) it but posted some interesting information.
Platypus syncs an online copy of selected files with a downloaded local version. Users can share by individual or project and can provide view or edit permission for individual users. GDrive shows up as a separate drive icon on users’ computers and can be accessed via a static URL. Internal users by default get a mere 500 MB of storage each. Philipp posted the Platypus Help file for Windows and Linux as well.
There’s no evidence that the program is set for public launch any time soon, but hints supporting such speculation have been popping up now and again for some time. Here’s a quick timeline of previous TechCrunch coverage of the illusive GDrive product:
- In March Google held an analyst day that included documentation of a future offering called Google Drive, emphasizing security, cross application, platform and device access. The information was quickly taken offline but Michael Arrington wrote a summary of “what we know” about Google Drive to date.
- In an April post about Microsoft’s forthcoming Live Drive, Michael Arrington wrote the following. “From what I am hearing around the valley, Google Drive is a 2007 product at best, largely because of product priorities and business model issues. According to sources, Google is trying to work out a way to provide the service for free (and there are very large bandwidth and storage costs with storage, obviously).”
- In July Corsin Camichel discovered a brief description of GDrive on the newly acquired Writely servers, which was quickly mirrored before Google took it down. Not a whole lot of details but it was seen as some level of confirmation of the project’s existence.
- If we needed any proof that Platypus at least exists, today’s leak might be it. Some people say (Paul Graham for example) that the best way to predict what Google will develop well for commercial release is to watch what they use internally.
A lot has changed since we wrote our overview of online storage in January. Watch for the release of ZohoDrive soon as well.
Does this leak mean anything in particular? It’s hard to know, but there’s at least some information available to chew on. In all likelihood GDrive is only a matter of time.
One note on the leak: As we pointed out in a post earlier this week about the new Google Docs and Spreadsheets product, Google is going to focus on convincing small and medium sized businesses that their internal Office documents will be secure on Google’s servers. Google needs to control its own leaks if they hope to do this - this is the second major Platypus leak this year.
Comments
Interesting. But I have been successfully using the gmail drive extension which works really well. Not sure how different is platypus?
“Google needs to control its own leaks if they hope to do this - this is the second major Platypus leak this year.”
…
Earth to Techcrunch: these are not leaks, just clever marketing.
Yeah, I thought about that too, but I don’t think this was a purposeful leak. Doesn’t add up.
This wasnt a purposeful leak at all. It just happened but by the looks of it, I doubt this product will be introduced in 2007, simply because there are too many things to consider. Testing it internally will not help in such a service because access issues will be different. I however hope that Live Drive releases soon.
I for one am looking forward to it
I’m just wondering if this solution will use already available standards? For example, would it be able to support other web-drives besides GDrive? If not, then this product is no good - I don’t want to be locked into a “Google Grid” storage solution.
I think you can be pretty sure that if Google release a online storage solution that the client they offer will be locked to their service.
The real usabillity issue as I see it will be if the integrate the storage solution with their other services or if the continue down the stand-alone path their on now. Docs-Spreadsheets aside everything to much stand-alone to have a high enough usability level.
I’m missing things like “open this attachment in Docs”, Google Video integrated in Analytics instead of it own sorry stats solution, etc.
Integrating with directory system in Windows Explorer, Linux, Unix will be a good measurement if it will be adopted by user
It is not a data leak. It is irrelevant to use that leak to spread a word about Google unability to keep its user data safe.
Why, O Why, is techcrunch hating Google that much??
>Lalal: Why, O Why, is techcrunch hating Google that much??
Because Google doesnot want to share their new launch product secret only to Techcrunch.
I’d rather get 500mb for free from Google than 5GB for free from AOL.
other;
I agree, especially with those data leaks
What I am getting at is that we will eventually have a GDrive and a LiveDrive both competing to be your new A drive (A:\).
Since we’re talking proprietary *junk*, that means all of your devices would have to be one drive or the other. In order for your PDA to access your Live Drive storage over a WiMax connection, you must be running Windows CE or Windows Mobile, or at least the MS client - nothing else will work. Same goes for Google, you would have to have a Google device to connect to your GDrive - if you’re using a Windows CE / Mobile product, no luck.
Lets not even bring Mac and Amazon into this, who are also hoping for the same thing. I’d hate to be the Best Buy sales rep that has to say “which flavor would you like, Live Drive, GDrive, Mac Drive, or S3?” … “Microsoft? That will be an extra $75 in licensing fees”.
So… If you can only connect to proprietary servers, what’s that mean for businesses? More installation of costly software, when everything they need is already there.
It’s an all around wrong solution and it’s obvious. We need ONE system that can connect to GDrive, Amazon S3, Live Drive, etc.. We need ONE system that uses open standards.
I noticed that Google tends to “leak” new product info on Fridays. I think this is just a managed leak to get the buzz out about the product. I’ve been waiting for this. It’d be great to have my info in the cloud (secured of course).
Dax
http://dax40.blogspot.com
WebDrive is based on open standards.
You can use WebDrive can connect to any SFTP, FTP, FTPS, WebDAV, GroupDrive, iDisk, or FrontPage server making them all look like a local drive letter.
We hope to add support for S3 in a future release and other open protocols as they emerge.
It looks like Google is trying to copy the existing functionality found in our WebDrive.
The real question is: when will motherboards support booting off storage hosted online? Brings up a lot of nice possibilities! (besides slow boot times, that is).
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