Google Blogscoped points to a Google video created by a Google employee (now private) that shows the Gdrive Platypus icon overlaid with the lyrics, “I’ve been ready to launch my product since 2002 … At least round here 5 years ain’t so long overdue.”
Philipp Lenssen suggests that perhaps Google’s online storage solution might have been canceled, but not surprisingly no one at Mountain View is confirming a thing. It does raise the rather valid question: What ever happened to GDrive?
Our GDrive coverage goes back 18 months with Google including references to “Google Drive,” “a place for users to store 100% of their data online” in a company presentation. In April 2006 there was speculation that Microsoft would launch Live Drive prior to GDrive. In October 2006 there was a confirmed GDrive client being used by Google employees. Ten months later and there is nothing.
What is perhaps stranger in a market sense is Google’s continuing slide from being the market leader in online storage to becoming a potential minnow. Google set the standard with the then unprecedented 2gb storage for online mail with Gmail. Today Google’s 2-3 gb of storage sees it lag behind Microsoft who recently announced 5gb for Hotmail, and Yahoo and AOL who provide unlimited email storage. Microsoft has already launched its online storage solution, although reviews, including ours, were tepid.
So is the GDrive more endangered vulnerable than the Platypus it uses for its logo? If you’re a Google employee and would like to set the record straight on or off the record drop us a line. We’d also like to see that video back up on a non-Google controlled website.
Disclosure (before anyone jumps in): I AM NOT an investor in Omnidrive, Michael is. I do know Nik though and my father once worked in Wollongong
Anyone thinking of commenting with “conflict of interest” should see this video.
Photoshop.
A non disclosure disclosure. Nice.
I would think now that storage pricing is established, Google has an incentive to create Gdrive. I was probably the only one who did not find their storage pricing a rip-off, but that logic is based on the assumption that Google will have a bunch of free products (Apps + Gdrive), and charging for storage is just their way of charging for the bundle…
(Almost) FIRST. Sorry, inspired by that CollegeHumor video…
I do not think they need it. What for? Showing ads next to files would piss people off.
Alex
just fyi, I am going to take the omnidrive link out. no reason to muddy the water.
After they announced their ridiculous prices for storage recently, I took that to mean that gdrive wasn’t in their minds anymore.
And Alex…I think they said the same thing about searches and emails…
Perhaps things like S3, email storage, adn the declining prices of thumbdrives have made Google (wisely) say, “online storage is a dog.”
Yeah I would love to see the video too. Frankly Google is getting somewhat weird about launching or shutting down these new services.
However I would rather have them launch something and run it for sure instead of taking it down the Froogle or Video path.
I do think that their new service (for extending email and picasa storage) will eventually evolve into a full G-Drive. I would love to see them enable a simple API program for users to access this service directly through Google services or any other web service for that matter.
See my post on Google storage offering.
http://abhishek.tiwari.com/20 07/08/10/gdrive-is-live/
Watch out Amazon S3
http://abhishek.tiwari.com/20 07/08/05/amazon-the-services-operating-ecosystem/
Apologize for the comment spamming. The URL’s in the previous post were broken. Here are the fixed ones.
http://abhishek.tiwari.com/200.....e-is-live/
http://abhishek.tiwari.com/200.....ecosystem/
The platypus isn’t endangered, fyi. That reference is incorrect.
In that the Australian Platypus is not endangered, I would say “yes”, GDrive is more endangered.
I’m waiting for G Drive to appear too, I’ve been chronicling the Online Data Storage market for a few years now
http://www.web-strategist.com/.....a-storage/
HoneyCut, Paul
I must be showing my age because I’m sure it was in the past (least that’s what I can remember from the NSW school system). For the record I checked: it’s “Vulnerable” so I stand corrected.
wait. i’m confused. didn;t google actually launch their online file storage service last week? i dont think it’s called gdrive but what is the difference?
here’s a news story i saw on it:
http://developers.slashdot.org.....10/1925243
any have clarification? i love box.net for online storage. they rock. but google’s prices are, well, very very tempting to small businesses like mine
Dave
what Google announced was paid storage extensions to existing products such as Gmail and Google Docs, not a stand alone storage solution. This Forbes article has more.
We’ll most likely see GDrive used in One Laptop Per Child before it hits the broader market:
http://video.google.com/videop.....9#0h36m29s
http://blogoscoped.com/forum/104160.html
I certainly would like to see a good convenient general file hosting service with a public sharing option. Sites like megaupload and rapidshare are annoying with all of the hoops and limitations they impose. Of course, Google would have to face yet another huge front of legal complaints for such a service, so I’m not sure if it would be worth it from their point of view.
Gdocs and Gmail are NOT compatible for copy/pasting. This is pissing me off to no end right now.
Google needs to chillax on new aps and improve existing ones.
I’m starting to miss Microsoft Outlook.
I think google’s not releasing gdrive is based on entirely different reasons. Gdrive is a highly ambitious project that aims at replacing user’s harddrive with the online piece and using harddrive only as a cache device. This means multiple gigs of data transfer from each user, at least the initial part. Imagine this for millions of potential users, it has potential to clog the entire internet and disturb their search and adsense revenues! Internet capacity is still limited and is not ready for a product of the type and scale of gdrive. While google may be ready with the product, they are not releasing it for this ‘disrupting’ reason. They might be just waiting for the capacity to catch up.
If you don’t mind about the quality, another version of the video is here from the Google Idol 2007 (during the Google Picnic).
http://youtube.com/watch?v=mAsMIN6WORw
FYI BTW - Gmail debuted with 1GB, not 2. Now it’s at almost 3, and anyone who thinks they need more than that is insane.
it’s obvious that everyone resents google and the power they wield, yet we are in charge of their successes or failures. Since we all hate Google, why don’t we all just stop using their products. Well, besides that they are usually the best products in their space, i dunno, because we’re sheep.
To be honest, I think Google is going downwards!
First they charge for larger storage for emails after they told us for years they are FREE.
Than they stopped Google Video and did not pay back the fees to the users…oh well, users got the money using the crappy Google Checkout that nobody wants to use.
Than they announced last week to pay $10.00 if you make pictures of a “real” store or business and send it with some information to Google (There are millions of businesses times $10.00 would make even Google ready for bankruptcy. Who came up with that stupid idea and how about the ROI on it…wooow). I think that is the tip of the iceberg of not knowing how to create new business ideas and last they came with this crappy website for advertisers telling them about click fraud (Yahoo was better and faster in that arena).
Oh, I totally forgot. The free Star Office is jet another sign that they are struggling to get their act together as it does make NO sense at all because it looks like that their online office suite does not really do as they expected.
Don’t get me wrong, I use Google myself and I have a Gmail account but lately I am not so sure about them any more. I think they forgot about us, the USERS. It has become the same lame corporation like Microsoft and others and if they don’t look out they might have a problem.
Hope you don’t kill me now for saying something about the “good” Google but I think we have to start looking more critical what they are doing than we did before.
google is another ebay example - you can make pretty much whatever mistake you want, like spend 4 billion on a mediocre win32 voip app, and it doesnt matter, since the core ad business is intact..
as for the storage , seems more like a product strategy. ‘drives’ are so passe. youll store all your data with google anyways, but it will be inside the apps where you need it..
Enough with the tired example of “unlimited” storage space at Yahoo Mail when that is only a desperate marketing ploy.
Martin, +1
Surprise — another story about google…….I did learn a thing or two from the comments — thanks.
online storage huh? would have to mount as a permanent drive that you redirect your home directory too, plus, not until ISP open their upstream’s to users will this really help us. Imagine saving that 125MB photo on a “gdrive” like app at a meager 256Mbps upstream… not exactly convenient for the masses. Maybe once upstream limits are increased we will see a re-boom of online storage devices.
crap… i wrote 256MBps, when I clearly meant 256Kbps… clearly i’ll get bashed anyway.
Platypus is still very much alive: http://wakoopa.com/software/platypus/versions
#27 - 125mb photos? you must have a very fancy camera there…
I’m looking forward to Gdrive…
I agree with Martin. I have noticed over the past year that Google is really loosing its edge. Why did the rapid innovation stop?
On the other hand, Google is helping astrophysicists and other scientists store terrabytes of information for free (although the data are not being transferred over the web). So it is not due to a lack of capacity. There has to be a reason they are not doing it yet.
#30 -
125 mb+ isn’t uncommon for Photoshop files with several layers, particularly if you’re starting with a 12 megapixel image.
Personally speaking, as a heavy digital photographer, I probably average 2-4 gb of new photos a weekend. Currently I’m using Amazon s3 + Jungledisk, but mostly for offsite backup - it’s definitely an “overnight backup job thing” rather than a “replacement hard disk” thing.
Unfortunately, the ridiculous cap on my upstream bandwidth prevents me from using it as anything more (fuh-q, Comcast). I’d much rather use my local hard disk for caching and treat it as the “backup”, mostly so that I could utilize my laptop more and not have to worry about synchronization, but that’s impossible due to the limitation of my ISP.
I’d love if Google launched a real competitor to s3 - not because I’m really unhappy with Amazon (the overall cost roughly equals what I’d be spending on an extra hard drive), but because I think competition in the space can only be good for consumers.
And come on… if Amazon and Microsoft can do it, there’s no reason why Google can’t. Minimally, they could enable the ability to access the stuff we have in Docs & Spreadsheets via a mapped Gdrive.
Google is becoming known more and more as a ‘1-hit wonder.’ With all the brain wattage they have one has to wonder why they cant design/develop better products.
My theory is that put a bunch of smart ‘kids’ in an open, ‘The Office’ like environment and you have a recipe for severe dysfunction and non-productivity–regardless of how many hours is logged.
Following up Eric’s remarks concerning bandwidth:
The Achilles heel of all online storage as of now is upstream bandwidth. Google or anyone else can offer immense amounts of storage, but getting local files into Gdrive, or whatever, takes a long, long time. Days, not hours, if you want to upload everything, and the process is inherently difficult because of connection difficulties, software glitches, and so on.
None of this is exactly news, but it remains a profoundly annoying fact with no apparent changes in sight. (Unless something’s going on that I don’t know about–which I’d be delighted to hear.)
So Google or any other online storage provider would do well to exert whatever pressure they can on the ISPs who insist on throttling our upload bandwidth.
Use Gspace for now.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1593
I have to disagree with some of the above commenters on the difficulties of uploading files. While it is true that there are certain applications which will be impossible, or at least very difficult, such as uploading large files (e.g. video/photo), there is still great advantage in a web-based drive - e.g. text documents. I’d love to have a GDrive and the slower upstream wouldn’t keep me from using it at all. Especially with bit-level incrementals, it becomes very possible to handle large amounts of data with a minimal amount of bandwidth.
as noted above, upload rates are a problem if google wants to do anything substantial in the online storage space.
we also keep hearing rumors of google buying fiber, buying wireless spectrum, etc. maybe google’s waiting to fix the upload speed problem and will roll this out then?
GDrive and SkyDrive are not ready to get into the online backup and storage business. The market is already saturated with at least 400 online backup companies listed in:
BackupReview.info
This very informative site posts up to date news and articles from the industry, and ranks the top 25 on a monthly basis.
It also features a CEO Spotlight page, where senior management people from the industry are interviewed.
You heard it here first, look for a file hosting announcement between Apple and Google when Leopard ships with the new Time Machine feature.
Anyone else concerned about giving Google access to all your files? Photos, no. Music, no. My entire business….. YES!