Machinist

2007.11.27 • 10:18 EST

GDrive: The Google hard drive is coming

The Wall Street Journal says today that Google will soon release an online hard drive that will let folks store all their personal documents up in the network cloud. Your music, photos, videos, and office documents could be uploaded to Google's hard drive and would then be available on any computer with Internet access.

The idea is not new, of course; the GDrive has long been a rumored Google initiative, and many companies, including Yahoo and Microsoft, already let you store files on the Web.

The Journal says Google will distinguish its service by letting people "upload and access files directly from their PC desktops and have the file storage behave for consumers more like another hard drive that is handy at all times, say the people familiar with the matter."

The paper has no info on the price of such services; it says Google is likely to offer both a free and fee version.

Of course, Google already provides a great deal of online space for your work. You can have your e-mail on Gmail, your office documents on Google Docs, and your photos on Picasa. Insiders tell the Journal that the new service aims to tie these various services together in a system with a single interface and search box.

A Microsoft rep is skeptical of such an effort; he tells the Journal that some people just don't trust online storage.

True, but these people are wrong.

Folks, put your goods online -- it's the best backup you can find. Google has far more safeguards on its data centers than you have on yours.

Google's not going to lose all your pictures in a hurricane or an earthquake or a fire. You may.

Google's jilted spouse isn't going to slip in late at night and rifle through your external hard drive. Yours could.