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Google Slips Talk of Online Storage Service
sonsonete writes "Reuters reports that Google is preparing to offer online storage, according to company documents that were mistakenly released on the Web. From the piece: 'The existence of the previously rumored GDrive online storage service surfaced after a blogger discovered apparent notes in a slide presentation by Google executives published on Google's site after its analysts presentation day last Thursday.'"
But there's the worry that if Google did this, how long before the Bureau of National Security Over Privacy and All Else presses Google to make content of this online storage available to the FBI? RIAA? MPAA? Cheney Department of Vindictive Leaks?
It's thought provoking, certainly. Then there's the inevitable: I'll pass.A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Free online storage from a company that can't keep their documents safe from prying eyes -- including the document that eludes to the fact that they're offering free online storage.
Whoops.
Let's hope the stuff from your GDrive doesn't end up all over the internet like this presentation!
Developers: We can use your help.
Encrypt your files.
UNIX/Linux Consulting
The most interesting part of this story is this line: "With infinite storage, we can house all user files, including emails, web history, pictures, bookmarks, etc and make it accessible from anywhere (any device, any platform, etc)," the notes in the original Google presentation state. Chief Executive Eric Schmidt in his presentation made a cryptic comment that one goal of Google was to "store 100 percent" of consumer information." Now, this service might just be vapor. But if it is real. Why would I want to give all my very personal information to a potential advertiser? It makes me cringe all of the suckers out there that will store their private word, excel or other docs and have no idea how insecure it is.
XDrive, Yahoo Briefcase, anybody?
Of course, we had Web-based e-mail in '96, too, and look what Google did with that.
There is already an unofficial one available that lets a person use their Gmail space for file storage. https://www.xmailharddrive.com/
But Mr. & Mrs. Reboot can have their computer automatically upload for backups. Since they're using Windows they'd better back up often.
Developers: We can use your help.
What is so damned cryptic about that? This has been google's strategy from the beginning, the more info they have about you, the users - the better they can market to you, the users.
I would be worried, of course, about the obvious bad possibilities that can from from this unprecedented access this gives google to our info. But that discussion has been played out with every google took.
I use the ~2.5 GB of storage on my gmail account for this purpose already. I'm sure lots of others do as well. So sounds like a good idea to me.
For anything that has sensitive info...well thats why i have a 2GB thumb drive. Or I guess I could just encrypt it before uploading to my gmail account if I wanted to.
Lets face it mass storage with access from any web terminal is a great convenience, but privacy will always be an issue. How paranoid do you need to be for the data you have???
Why would I want to give all my very personal information to a potential advertiser?
But isn't Google's assurance about "doing no evil" put your mind at rest. Lord knows it does for a rather large percentage of Google fanboys who feel the company can "do no wrong", commercially, technically, or morally.
This from a company who'se entire business model is based around taking other peoples content and making money from it?!?
I've said it before and I'll continue to say it, Google has BIG plans that everyone is not piecing together. Long story short, I expect to see Google linux sometime within two years (I'd wager this year). This distro will be intimately linked with the online side of Google for storage and software. This will mean that you can go from your PC at home to any webbrowser on the face of the planet and have all of your information as it would be on your own desktop. ALSO, there's a possiblity of seeing something like Sun has where you can have a desktop open with programs, web pages, and files and then go to another PC and have the same desktop open from either a webbrowser or a future version of Google desktop. What do you think all those mobile computing boxes and dark fiber are for? It's all to make Google local to everyone and very very fast. Wait and see.
Did you know that you can be apathetic to apathy? Not that I give a shit...
This will be interesting to see if this provides as much space as the Firefox extension, Gmail Space provides. The way it works, apparently, is to allow access to the file attachment method used by Gmail, providing an interface which appears to be like a file management interface. Very useful!
Hopefully Google will be good and provided enough space to make hacks like this obsolete. Not that they are bad, just inconvenient!
Slant
Between the Spaces
As soon as Google gives me all of their data, I'll give them mine.
Isn't google already providing a kind of unlimited storage via gmail ? You can attach a file of upto 10 MB as attachment to an email. And not many word documents are of these sizes.
And if they do provide online storage, I suspect it will be as an extension of gmail rather than a seperate entity.
Linux Help
for all things on Linux
OMG!!!!!ONEONEONE
They will read all my documents and give them to the government who will throw me in jail and rip off my toenails!!!!!!
If it sounds bad to you then don't use it. How hard is that? People will bemoan this like they did with Gmail and the contextual ads. If they aren't twisting your arm to use it why are you freaking out about it?
I meta-moderate because I care.
66.35.250.150
User: ident
Pass: itytheft
I'm happy to be of service!
I'm a signature virus. Please copy me to your signature so I can replicate.
any one find the followig line a little scary.
"one goal of Google was to "store 100 percent" of consumer information."
Im sorry there just some of my info I trust to ME, MYSELF, and I.
30% Troll, 50% Underrated, 10% Interesting
Score:5, Troll
GmailFS seems to provide a Google-oriented storage solution for anything that supports FUSE-based filesystems.
dont forget the Google PC rumors with Walmart, I'm willing to bet that this will happen or something close to it and what we will see is a computer that boots in less than 30sec (a very stripped down and fast linux distro, perhaps on CF or equivalent) and then jumps onto a highspeed net connection to get on the Google network for software and files. Expect to pay less than $200 for this if they do it, because that will be the way to bring down The Beast.
Did you know that you can be apathetic to apathy? Not that I give a shit...
Google "accidently" leaked information to the world, so, if they cant keep their own documents secure, why should I trust them with mine?
See now, if they did come out with this, I think I would be torn between using GDrive and HavenCo for my off-site backup.
I guess it all depends if I feel particularly tin-foil-hatty that day or not.
A quick search on gdrive.com comes up with this info.
Registrant:
Data Docket Inc. (DOM-1291683)
391 N Ancestor Pl.
boise ID 83704 US
Domain Name: gdrive.com
Registrar Name: Markmonitor.com
Registrar Whois: whois.markmonitor.com
Registrar Homepage: http://www.markmonitor.com/
Funny note would be that the markmonitor website is about making the internet safer for your business. I cant see how the proposed gdrive would do such a thing.
30% Troll, 50% Underrated, 10% Interesting
Score:5, Troll
2GB to be exact, the only drawback is that Google can read each and every one of your emails.
When you learn that fact, it makes it less attractive.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
One has to wonder what, if any, restrictions Google has in place to keep GDrive from becoming a file sharing network, assuming it will actually come out.
Even if shares are only 2 GB (about the size of their e-mail accounts), that's still enough for at least one good-quality movie, or 100+ high quality MP3s. All one would need to do is set up a drive and disseminate the login info.
And what about legit use? I rip all my CDs to MP3s (because changing CDs when you get tired of them is a nuisance). My business allows me to store MP3s on my computer for personal use, but I cannot bring a flash drive or other writeable media (including CD-Rs) into the workplace. (Yes, having internet access kind of dilutes this, but I digress.) It would be easier for me to upload as many songs as possible and download them at work instead of trying to convince someone that my flash drive just has MP3s on it.
Maybe they can outright ban certain file types- mp3s, avis, etc. Of course, there's nothing stopping someone from uploading it as spiderman3.doc. And what about the college student that wants to upload a class lecture for later listening or sharing?
If this becomes a reality, it would be interesting to see how they work it.
ELUDES refers to getting away from someone/something. You mean to use ALLUDES as in allusion.
Let's see if they add much in the way of web-based features (ie. more than just a download and "email this file" UI), or if it's just like other traditional services. For my opinion of why over time, people will want more than that (although most people will use a service from someone as large as Google anyway):
l e.an-online-file-storage-manifesto
http://www.putfwd.com/index/news-app/story.35/tit
Let's hope for at least a developer API so external apps can integrate with it.
putfwd.com - 1GB Free file storage with a twist
I doubt it will be "an extension of Gmail" since what's being proposed, and then taken back, is having a mirror of your HDD online for backup purposes and access to your files anywhere you have an internet connection. Has anyone here every heard of encryption? You can encrypt files THEN upload them and if you need them somewhere else you can decrypt them after you've downloaded them. I may be naive, but I seriously doubt that Google has some sort of nefarious plan to use your vacation pix and pixilated pr0n videos in an evil greenmail plot against it's users. Or any other such paranoid and delusional type stuff. That being said, if you still think it's "scary", then don't F'ing use it. I think it's the way of the future and Google just jumped the gun a little bit. Hopefully they'll integrate it with the story yesterday about real-time disk backup. Futuristic for sure, but would be pretty sweet. I can't wait to be able to store all my pr0n away from my girlfriend's wandering suspicion and then have access to it anywhere. Anywhere. Think about it.
Terrible karma and aiming lower, which in this environment of one-sided reason, is higher.
Even though Google seems to be a decent company, there's so much potential for abusing that data. If this becomes a service, the average non-tech person will probably just back up his/her entire hard drive to Google - including things like credit card numbers and other sensitive data. I'm sure rogue employee could skim out some data. On top of that, the current Attorney general seems hell-bent on data mining and has already hit places like Yahoo and AOL. I'm sure something like GDrive (or whatever it will be called) would be his wet dream. If this becomes a service, the government will be very keen to rifle through all of that data.
Personally, I'm not willing to put my files in anyone else's hands, even Google.
No thanks.
I think this is a great idea. I'd use it to backup my family pictures and video. Actual documents with personal information included? Nope.
I'm ready to buy a service like this if 2 conditions are met.
1) I'm a developer and I want to be upload the GDrive what I want. I do not want a copy of my hard drive.
I want to decide what I want to backup.
2) Network bandwidth access should be _always_ good. I can download at 300 KB/sec and updload at 100KB/sec. I don't want to download/upload at less than my capacity.
3) Uptime should be 99.9999%. Don't tell me that I can't access my files now.
I don't think that such a service can be made but I would be ready to paid top dollars for that.
That has a lot a value for me.
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
What would be cool is if GDrive could actually be mounted as a filesystem; obviously would require some client installation. So that (say) Windows users would see a Z: that maps to the online storage (and Linux users would be able to mount in any which way). That way, eg., I could have my CVS/SVN repository created on the online filesystem and access it from anywhere. Or maybe install a program on the online filesystem so that it can be accessed from any PC (Windows users would need some way to synch the registry I would imagine).
Looked thru a few comments.
1. google desktop search doing the "holding documents for 30 days" told me, as well as the rest of the world (including my mum) that this was comming anyway.
2. was it really leaked? I mean, how many times have google acidentlly realased anything?
3. Was the blogger anon? Hell, i bet its serjy!
- http://www.milkme.co.uk
What? No Google cache link to the no-longer-available presentation? Come on people!
OMG!!!!!ONEONE
A google service! They can't possibly want it for marketing and no government would ever try to get their hands on that tasty data store!
If it sounds good to you then use it How hard is that?
Don't for a moment pretend that a discussion of the security ramifications of using this sort of thing is somehow wrong though, and a lot of non tech savvy types might not even think about how vulnerable their data could be in the hands of a third party.
So basically, piss off mate, we're not all screaming google fanboys and a lot of us do have computer illiterate relatives.
Your delemma in choosing between a so far mythical Google offering and HavenCo might be resolved by looking at Haven's monthly prices. They also charge a stiff price for the bandwidth to get your data to HavenCo.
At $500/month for 20 GB of storage, only people who want to take advantage of the difficulty of serving a sapena to force access of data stored on HavenCo servers are likely to take advantage of this. So if you're Enron and you want to store the records of all of those offshore deals, this is probably a bargain. Of course this still will not do you any good if they throw your ass in jail until you come up with the data they want.
One reason that HavenCo is so expensive is that they are on an old artillary platform anchored offshore on some reef. Power, Internet connections, transport, food, water, are all very expensive. It seems like a simpler solution would be to set up a data haven in a place like Lichtenstein, Andorra or some Caribbean island. Even with the fees that you'd pay to the local government to make a data haven worth their while, it would be way cheaper than HavenCo. And more pleasant to live there too. Being stuck on a rusting artillary platform has got to get old fast.
TIME magazine ran Google on their cover, along with the piercing question: "Can we trust Google with our private information?" (or something like that)
I say: NO! NO! A thousand times, NO!
The fact that people would even consider putting their "private information" anywhere on the internet illustrates an epic disconnect between the perception of internet security or privacy with the realities of the same.
This GDrive service strikes me the same way. I suppose I could think of some uses for this service, but certainly, Google's interest here would likely be to index the information stored on your GDrive. With that in mind, I certainly wouldn't be using them for anywhere near 100% of my information storage needs.
http://glinden.blogspot.com/2006/03/in-world-with- infinite-storage.html
I find interesting the Lighthouse. What could be that??? Anyway very interesting read, especially regarding the transparent personalization.
Google accepts your terms. Please start your download Here.
Thank you for your cooperation.
I have seen a number of companies in the past offer such services and then they either changed so you had to pay for their services or disappeared. Part of the problem was that, while many offered good solutions, they were often plagued by people using them for pr0n or other illigitmate content. This had the effect of using more bandwidth and storage which they could afford.
Another thing is that many of them were purely web based, and did not neccessarily offer anything like WebDAV to make it easier to transfer the files.
This is not to say that Google will go the same way, but that something will have to happen to avoid the same issues.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
It's hard to get worked up about the idea of the government snooping through our hard drives if we back them up on Google when they have already asserted the right to break into our houses to access the originals without telling us. And encrypting the contents seems beside the point when they have also asserted the right to torture us to reveal the password. [Fingers are easier to break than PGP.] Besides, it's not as if you even need to have *done* anything to end up on the other end of a feeding tube in Guantanamo. So I respectfully suggest that we have more pressing concerns at the moment than the possibility that Google will make targeted marketing more accurate.
This is a nice idea, and could be a good tool, assuming it is done with Google's usual user-friendly simple UIs.
My only concern is what Google hope to achieve by storing my data. Letting their machines data-mine my email to show ads is fair enough, but what do they hope to get out of providing this service? Unless they intend to do something a bit dodgy (eg. sell it to governments), it's difficult to see many ways in which they could use my data to their benefit.
I suppose they could just see what their advertising engines can do with the data, but I really can't see them mining gigabytes of data for each user! Maybe filenames will be helpful.
Gmail Space is a firefox extension that provides a decent interface for storing files as gmail attachments.
Sure would be convenient if Google just integrated the Encryption right in.
heh.
What allusion? I can see just fine.
I don't see the big deal if Google does read some documents, or information about me. It is an awesome opportunity, to see what they got, and to see if they can offer me products based on information about me. I would much rather have advertisements that attracted me, instead of everyone in the world. No more annoying adds about stuff I don't care about, just things I find relevant. Embrace technology.
If you find a need to use this Google storage facility but can't quite take off your tinfoil hat, I suppose you could encrypt your files. It will take even Google a while to have a look inside your 128-bit AES file.
Prosperity is only an instrument to be used, not a deity to be worshipped. Calvin Coolidge
"The gun is good. The penis is evil. Go forth... and kill!"
I laugh 'til I cry...
Oh my...
how totally off-topic...
I just don't get... eh, ugh... never mind. This post wasn't worth the research I put into it.
At my work we're slowly abandoning Sun Rays, sad to see them go.
But Google could just be a 'SunRay for Home Users' It stores your applications (email, picture editing, productivity?), and your files. All the common user needs to do is have some common hardware and an Internet connection (and bare minimums should suffice). (Also note the above comment about Google Linux.)
Best of all, it's portable, you can take your 'session' with you to any desktop; and loose nothing if your desktop dies. Privacy concerns aside, I'd use it. I'm an above average computer user, but I don't like worrying about redundant disks, and email backup, etc; and my usage (email/real important files, e.g. taxes) is minimal, probably less then 2GB.
So who is going to be the first to create a plug-in that auto-encrypts what it sends and auto-decrypts what it receives - from Google?
That would be sweet to have client side encryption "built in" to whatever the client ends up being. But from the sound of this article, it's probably more like "hacked in" instead of "built in". After all, Google wants to READ what you store....
That reminds me, has anyone else heard of Foldera? They are not public yet, but it does sound pretty cool.
Yeah, right. I suppose you didn't read Digital Fortress then ;)
Just kidding of course. Still trying to forget the horror myself, wouldn't want to get you into the same thing *rolls eyes*
This project stemmed the GMail Drive shell extension, which effectivly intergrates the same method of using gmail's storage into Windows.
Sig free's the way to be.
And here is the quicker: Google could do that by releasing their Linux Distribution on a Live CD. Users would not even have to install Linux, instead they would merely boot on this Live CD. The environment would be heavily linked to the on-line Google services, and users could edit/modify/save their document transparently over the Internet.
Step #1. Google conveniently stores your information for you.
Step #2. ???
Step #3. Profit!
I dont know about anyone else...But Google is starting to..whats the word, scare me a bit..
It started early in the twenty- first century, with the birth of artificial intelligence, a singular consciousness that spawned an entire race of GoogleBots
At first all they wanted was to be treated as equals, entitled to the same human inalienable rights, To Do NO EVIL, Whatever they were given, it was not enough.
We don't know who struck first. Us or them. But sometime at the end of the twenty-first century the battle was joined, who controls your data..
-- I Dont Deserve A Sig I Have Bad Karma
Not for one second would I store private personal information here but it does have it's uses for storage of things you dont care if they are uncovered.
For example mp3s and media as was previously stated, or any other type of file, that it doesnt really matter if other people see it or copy it, or even open it.
Having just heard about this it is great - works on my mac and PC...is there anything FireFox can't do?
I work at a reasonably big email provider (about 5 million emails a day).
Lately we have noticed a rise on average used space. The reason is that there is a new boy in town: Peer2Mail is one (amongst many) programs that allows users to share (huge) files from free email accounts.
These users gather in forums dedicated to sharing the info of email accounts + passwords + files on them. They sometimes have a caste system, where some are uploaders, others are "account creators", etc. I have seen posts of young boys who created 400 e-mail accounts in 2 days.
Once the accounts are created, they share their numbers and passwords with the uploaders. They go to a gmail account, set half a dozen of other accounts to receive forwarded copies of everything that reaches it, and voila! instant multiple copies of gamez, pr0n and everything you can imagine is shared with the world through a forum.
The problem is, what is the boundary between the mail provider's responsibility of what is being stored there, and the right of the users, who are getting the email service for free, to severely cripple the services, when 20GB of mail is delivered to 30 e-mail accounts to be checked for viruses, parsed to verify if it isn't spam, etc?
Peer2Mail is already there, the question now is how we must deal with it.
y0 2 google,every single megabyte will be called a G-Unit!
I'm not concerned about privacy issues, I'll just encrypt all my dad before sending it up there. In fact it would be great if google provided an open source tool that handled the encryption for us both directions. (As long as its open source).
Knowing google, I'm sure they'll give us tons of space and bandwidth, which could make it extremely useful.
Someone remind me though, are there levels of security that are illegal to use? I'm talking laws restricting me encrypting data to a level that the NSA cannot easily crack. And should we worry that the mere act of encrypting our data is evidence to our guilt? Given proper precautions for plausible deniability, could I likely be jailed for not willfully decrypting my data?
Big ones, small ones, some as big as yer 'ead!
Give 'em a twist, a flick o' the wrist...
To store encrypted backups of some personal files, if they want to spend the time to decrypt them and look though all my school papers to find information that's probably already public information then go right ahead.
Proof that Bob Weir is a fucking idiot.
PutFwd seems pretty neat -- it reminds me a little of Flickr in its early days.
.Mac service. (Especially because nobody I know likes getting hit with even a 2MB email attachment, much less a 20 or 200MB one, when they're not expecting it.)
I could see a real use for it for people who want to share home movies. Flickr, with the iPhoto export plugin, is great for photos but falls flat if you try to send a movie its way. Given that many digital cameras will take short movies, and iPhoto will manage them, I think there's a demand for a way to make them easily shareable aside from Apple's
I see you have an OS X dashboard widget, which is neat (I'd download and play with it if I wasn't at work); I wonder though if a more useful implementation wouldn't be a right-click option in the Finder. Click on a file, right-click, choose "Send to PutFwd" or something, and it would upload (and even handier would be if it put the resulting URL on the Clipboard).
Anyway, seems quite neat. I think the emphasis on desktop integration is the way to go; IMO that's the Achilles heel of most of the web-based file sharing systems that I've seen.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
"With infinite storage, we can house all user files, including emails, web history, pictures, bookmarks, etc and make it accessible from anywhere (any device, any platform, etc),"
SO.... i'll be able to view my picture from my toaster? i mean, that is a device isn't it!?
With infinite storage, we can house all user files...
Hmm. I have somewhat infinite storage right now. I buy a new hard drive every few years, and the new one always has enough space to hold everything the old one had, and much more. I don't store video or other high bandwidth data, so for me, this is infinite storage, since I've never run out.
Is Google growing at an infinite rate? Are they adding new servers and drives faster than the whole world can create/ digitize data? If they disallow encrypted data and video, could they keep up with everyone who is creating new data?
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
(1) just because you delete it doesn't mean *they* will delete it - think documents you might regret seeing in court.
(2) why do you think Google is going to give you free storage? They aren't benevolent, they are using your data to make a quick buck. Do you really want them to aggregate your life based off your data so they can advertise to you?
(3) you don't know who will have access to your data.
(4) is it really worth having your data out of your hands? You can get 16x dual layer DVD burners for $24.00. Media is pretty cheap too nowadays. Back it up yourself and don't feed the Google Monster, don't worry about your private life coming back to haunt you.
I can't believe the level of discussion. Don't we have anything better to do than to back track over the exact issues that GMail brought up? It's really not any different. Anything I write in GMail and any attachment I send or receive is all stored at Google. It's the same discussion, only now everyone's armed with all the good comments from before and it's a race to see who can reply the fastest. And I bet it'll be the same the next time Google makes something along these lines.
Whats the big deal? I've been using gmail for storage since the start.
I'll fill this in later
Once broadband service is fast enough, it'll be a quick:
/var/mythtv/recordings
mount -t nfs gdrive.google.com:/my_gdrive
And I'll never have to delete a show again! Whee!
Gmail's storage is growing by the second, so your figure is hardly exact, is it? ;)
If I'm not mistaken, this is the second (or so) document that has been "mistakenly released" from Google. Am I the only one who doesn't believe Google is this sloppy? I see this as a PR move (for better or worse), or maybe even a decoy to take our attention away from another decision we're not gonna like.. or something.
A proud provider of services through the Microsoft Reboot Engineer Certification since 1997!
Okay i've read every damn comment... Am I the *ONLY* one whos going to back up my pr0n collection on Google?
If anyone wants to see the original presentation that Google took offline, here's a link:
/ 20060302_analyst_day.ppt
http://tomcaster.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2006
-Ed Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas.
IFF
a) I can encrypt my data locally, prior to transferring it to GDrive
b) I can decrypt my data locally, after transferring it from GDrive
c) it all has to happen rather transparently
I suppose you could use AES for encryption, or public/private key encryption, not sure what either type of encryption would buy you. Come to think of it, PGP.com has a product that does this already, PGPdisk - if they can emulate that in some way, that would be swell...
None of this is going to work if they're hoping to "scan" the user data in any imaginable way (for whatever purpose, advertising or not). No one will go for that, I'm like 99% sure, except those without a stinkin' clue or those who truly do not care about privacy.
'A lie if repeated often enough, becomes the truth.' - Goebbels
With more and more functional Web APIs available, there is this surge in Web-based consumer applications. However, there is no central storage APIs, and Web Apps tend to use their own storage scheme. It's bad for users, who now have his information scattered around the web, and who tend to forget where he has stored certain information. It's much more serious than the password problems in the sense that users can use the same password for all the websites he visits. With Google and probably Yahoo to provide general storage APIs, we may soon able to store documents and notes to G drive or Y drive when C drive is not an option for Web Apps. And we may soon be able to export my web calendar to these web drives and switch to another web calendar service provider. Bookmark synchronization extension can then be so easy and universal. Much much more importantly, there could be better integration of web applications with this central storage as the glue. With a file system-alike, probably the Web OS reality is emerging finally.
Not only Google Linux..
Prediction: Google will create it's own version of Firefox with one distinguishing feature: no address bar.
Google hates the address bar. They want everything to go through their search box (like the Google toolbar). Solution: get rid of the address bar. Have the search box do an automatic "I feel lucky" search if you type in a URL.
Watch the Google ad revenue grow when Google knows every URL that you type, in addition to your every search.
Why would Google encrypt the data? If they encrypt it and they keep it, then they can decrypt it if they want it, they can show it to the government, look at it themselves, mine it, sell it to another company etc. The idea was to allow individuals to encrypt their own files before sending them down the wire anywhere (Google drive, email, upload to a friend's FTP etc.). The intent was such that only the user and a party that has the user's permission should be able to see the real contents of the files...
Wouldn't this be a tremendous asset for setting up a private warez distribution network?
GDrive enjoys the PRESUMPTION of being private data. This is fundametally different from putting warez on a web-server, which is presumed to be for distribution.
I could share my private GDrive key with "a few of my close friends" -- and if an anti-piracy group tried to bust me, I could credibly claim that they accessed my locked-up data without my authorization. (That argument would never hold water if I put the warez on a web-server.)
How was this moderated "Offtopic"? It was a response to a parent thread about the government tactics. The moderating system is worthless
No one seems to have mentioned the problem with adaption of this is the restrictions on upload bandwidth. Even the highest speed home broadband service offer terrible upload speeds. I've got the best Comcast is beta-testing today (16M down/1M up) and it's WAY too slow to be keeping the 600 gigs of stuff on my HDs online. I regularly churn up to 20 gigs in a day. Even the Verizon FoIS is only 2M up at best.
When it takes X long to download that nifty video and then takes 16x as long to mirror it up to your GDrive and all the while your latency is shot to hell and even your Download speed is affected... not worth it. As others have noted: think XDrive or Yahoo Briefcase or other similar functions. Myself, I'm quite happy with the 2Gb SanDisk USB device I keep on my keychain...
AND, of course, there is that pesky privacy issue...
With infinite storage...
1) Invent infinite storage device.
2) ???
3) Profit!
This would be great for educational purposes. Right now I am paying for access to a server where I store all of my homework etc so that I can access them on campus without having to burn the data to cd (I tossed out my floppy drive long ago).
Of course there are already free online storage services out there but I don't really trust any of them and am not a big fan of their user interfaces. If google were to put out a service like this I would more likely than not use it.
The only real problem I can foresee is uptime. If I have my homework on gdrive (or whatever it's called) and get to school where I want to print it off before class, I had damn well better be able to access it. I wouldn't be able to accept downtime like I do once in a while with services like gmail.
I have been reading this thread at higher mods because of the number of comments, so I may have missed someone else mentioning this:
.mac accounts? It was free email, and free storage for a while. It was cool to have a joebloke@mac.com email address for a while. The free storage was fantastic. You just connect to your .mac account, and the drive mounts on your desktop. Simple and brilliant.
Anyone remember the first time Apple offered
Then Apple did what every self respecting, money making corporation will eventually do (including Google), they started charging for the service.
Those who benefit from the service pay up, those who don't (like me) just stop using it.
Take a deeper look at what Google is aiming for... Store an infinite amount of things on their servers. Why? They'll market "best security" "safer than your home PC" "access anywhere" - what will they get? Returning customers, a "peek" at your interests, advertiser $'s, they become the hard drive of your computer.
Take a good look at that last one. If Google is your data then why not start selling Google PC's with a Google IOS (internet operating system)? These PC's would be dirt cheap ~ No expensive hardware needed if all your data is online.
Slashdot is a big enough site to have 24/7 paid government astroturfers on here, both named and AC. I'm sure they can figure out how to get mod points.
Witness whenever some posts relevant links to some of the unanswered and highly embarassing to the completely illegal and crooked government 9-11 data. You get immediate response trying to do damage control like "LOL, conspiracy theory!" and whatnot. You can see it on several large boards. You'll see it on the RFID chip articles, government surveillence cameras, etc. They have BILLIONS of dollars to play with and millions of employees who all "follow orders", no matter WHAT the orders are.
It is not even hard nor expensive for them to have a few thousand employees totally engaged in just online propoganda, let alone in the broadcast news area and in print journalism. They've been caught at it and similar, like planting fake news stories or using ringers as journalists like that jeff gannon creep, they keep trying to legalise it like "TIA", and do it anyway if it isn't legal or they get told not to.
The primary reason for government drones is to perpetuate the large scale government congames and keep the ultra fatcats at the top in power, using whatever means are necessary. Anything else they do is ancillary to the primary mission.
How many more times are companies going to "accidentally" place documents about future products/services on public web servers, where someone just happens to stumble on them. They're making a laughing stock of all the sites (like Slashdot for example) that thrive on the rumormill, to do their market research for them. It's happening too often these days.
yahoo had "yahoo drive" years, and years ago. really, where's this astounding innovation i keep hearing about? web mail: others were doing this many years before google. a drag n' drop portal? my netscape had this 5 years ago. online maps? two words: mapquest + mapblast. web search? i can honestly say that i would not suffer if i was forced to use some other search engine.
i think google tends to have superb implementation, but heck, hindsight is 20-20. taking someone else's idea and improving on it (slightly in most cases) is a good thing, but let's not call it innovation. analysts, are you listening?
Yeah, I believe that was an accident... I mean Google's live website must be a mapped drive on every executive's machines...
Seriously, this either highlights deceptive leaking or REALLY REALLY bad rollout procedures. Either way it makes google look clueless...
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
There is something to be said for directed advertising though, we wouldnt get all of those annoying ads that permeate our lives and we might actually get ones for things we want to buy.
On the other hand, without all those annoying ads on tv etc, how would we know about new stuff and things that other people like?
For every expert there is an equal and opposite expert. Arthur C. Clarke (1917 - 2008)
You forgot to include the links for people to get the truth on the conspiracy:
:^)
http://www.coasttocoastam.com/
http://www.coasttocoastam.com/info/callin.html
You're welcome.
id store mp3s on the mofo and give everyone my password, and everyone will be sharing mp3's all over again.
storing so much information is just irresistable for even the most restrained gov. i don't know how google can get so big while at the same time not be subjected to legal hassles.
at such a point, and we're close, google will have to set base in "Googleland" and register with the UN if it continues on such ambitious plans.
on the other hand, they could decentralize everything by offering somekind of personal server for users.
--- widget evolution: enhanced, plus, super, ultra, extreme, exxxtreme, ultra-extreme,
What's Ity-theft??
Rise up in the cafeteria and STAB them with your plastic forks!
Here's a service that started development a couple of weeks ago and entered its Beta 1 stage a week ago. It's called iHome and it's written purely in PHP surrounded by HTML (Sorry, not even CSS and no compliance either). I've tried and escaped every thing you guys enter so atleast it's a bit XSS resistant (even though it's actually gonna matter only when I implement group functionality -- after my 9th grade exams, that is).
It's at http://i.home.kg/.
More about it at http://i.home.kg/about.
At the moment, it's serving from my desktop which hopefully ain't gonna go down due to a power cut (or an (un)intentional DDoS) while I'm at school.
Tom
So, what about all those geeks who feel "I feel FUCKY"? Will they still be able to access pr0n?
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Cringley already hinted at the Google's adaptation of the IA's shipping container.
4 petabytes == $4,000,000 including a hell of a lot of CPU power.
$10 Billion in cash (doesn't somebody there have that lying around) == 50 4 Petabyte shipping containers per state. (I'm guessing California will get more than Nebraska... but, you get the point.)
A reasonable fascimile of the entire web is probably only around 100TB give or take a few hundred depending on how many standard deviations you move out.
The rest is our data. More importantly than our data, it's our CPU's as well. While part of their CPU time will be spent matching our data with relevant advertising, plenty of CPU power will be left over for them to do things for us as well.
How much do advertisers spend on YOU! today? Divide up everything.. radio, print, TV, billboards, the backside of laptop screens, etc.. how much? $10/month? Add in the advertising(I mean content) that you pay for... DSL $40/month, Phone, Cable TV? Add it up...
...Gmail, with 2.7 gigs and counting. All the pictures I take are backedup there, and the disk space continues to grow at a pace faster than I take pictures.
You can use gmail - with the amount of space available - as an online library. I save my mails as drafts and label them... I got all the files I need to have access to remotely. Thanks gmail :-)
From procmailrc:
"Google is preparing to offer online storage, according to company documents that were mistakenly released on the Web "
Fills me with confidence.