Storage Toolkit

Does Google want to store the world?

Colin Barker ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 07 Mar 2006 17:05 GMT

Leaked comments from a Google analysts' briefing appear to show that Google is going into the storage market in a bigger way than it has attempted so far through services like Gmail.

According to comments which were made at a Google analysts meeting last week, Gdrive is intended to allow users to mirror the data stored on their hard drives. This information was apparently backed up by company documents that were made available online, but quickly removed.

While the presentation to analysts contained a summary of upcoming features of Google software, the notes appended to the presentation contained more details of Gdrive.

Google got started in the storage business when it began storing users' emails in with the recently rechristened Google Mail.

With Google Mail users can store in excess of 2GB of data for free and the service was an immediate success with users, although Google initially put strict limits on the number of users.

According to Greg Linden's blog, the notes from the Google analysts's briefing showed that, "users don't realise how slow things are until they get something faster.... [they] assume it takes time for a Webpage to load, but the experience should really be instantaneous. Gmail started to do this for Webmail, but that's just a small first step. Infinite bandwidth will make this a reality for all applications."

The note continued: "We can house all user files, including: emails, Web history, pictures, bookmarks, etc and make it accessible from anywhere (any device, any platform, etc)."

According to Reuters, Google's chief executive, Eric Schmidt, made a cryptic comment in his presentation that one goal of Google was to "store 100 percent" of consumer information.

After the contents of the PowerPoint presentation had been shared around the Web, the original file were replaced by 94-page PDF, minus the speakers' notes.

Google is refusing to comment on what may or may not have been in the presentation or notes.