Rumours of Google's GDrive coming in 2009 Surface

In the past few hours, there has been a flurry of articles in the mainstream media which indicate that Google could be on the verge of launching an online storage service that could possibly kill the desktop PC as it is known.

An article by TGDaily was enough to spark a frenzy of postings online that let to believe that Google wiill be launching a storage that will in effect federate all the content that a Google account user stores online.

This means for example that you will be able to access Gmail, Picasa, Google Maps, Google Apps and many more files created using Google in one single online base, through so-called Cloud Computing technologies.

Microsoft already offers Skydrive with 25GB to boot from and 50MB per file limit. Space wouldn't be an issue per se, the only concern would be to have a fast enough broadband connection.

Obviously, storing files online is not something new and this has spawned a number of online backup systems like Carbonite, Elephant Drive, Mozy, Box.net and Amazon's own S3 but Google's approach would truly propel the concept into mainstream market.

Those old enough to remember the Network Computing era of the late 1990's (remember Oracle's Network Computer and thin clients?) will perhaps finally see the fulfilment of the promises of having a thin client, rather than the fat one to which we have become accustomed.

Will this kill the PC as many are predicting? Well this is not even remotely likely to happen for a number of reasons (ed: that's another article to be written). 

But this will not prevent GDrive from becoming one of he most eagerly awaited Google products of 2009 although we'd be keener on a Google gaming console. But that's unlikely.

Go To Page 2 for our comments and more related links