Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Google Slips Talk of Online Storage Service

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the ambitious-google-never dept.

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.'"

70 of 266 comments (clear)

  1. Concept vs. Reality by ackthpt · · Score: 5, Insightful
    In principle, not a bad thing, considering Jane & Joe CtrlAltDel don't usually make backups and probably hardly come close to the actual capacity of their hard drives. Not likely to be a realistic consideration for Slashdotters who count their media, development tools, etc in the terabytes, though.

    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?

    Google recently squared up against the U.S. Justice Department which has subpoenaed a limited set of data on Google search habits, drawing an outcry from privacy advocates.
    It's thought provoking, certainly. Then there's the inevitable:
    Google, Inc.
    1600 Ampitheatre Parkway
    Mountain View, CA 94043

    Dear GDrive user, we are very concerned about recent activity with regard to your account. Please verify you User ID at the following link. www.google.com/accounts[links to: update.google-account.info/idpasswdstealer.html]

    Remember never to give out your User ID or Password to people you don't know, those who spit while talking, people who do not wash their hands after using the lavatory, wombat ranchers, msn fanboys or anyone with the middle initial of J.

    Best regards,
    Google Internet Security
    Google, Inc.

    I'll pass.
    --

    A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
  2. That's just what we need! by dada21 · · Score: 3, Funny


    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.

    1. Re:That's just what we need! by g0at · · Score: 2, Insightful

      eludes [sic]

      Actually, the article suggests just the opposite!

      -b

      --
      myselfmusic
    2. Re:That's just what we need! by ackthpt · · Score: 3, Funny
      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.

      Yeah, but just think, your stuff would be blocked from anyone in China.

      --

      A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
    3. Re:That's just what we need! by fermion · · Score: 3, Insightful
      It's not so much that Google can't keep documents from prying eyes, it is that they are in the bussiness of selling ads, and one way they get people to look at the ads is to actively prying open documents to index and match to advertisers. For istance, Google mail works by matching ads to the content of the mail. Your privacy is not specifically violated, but googles still gets to index your information and match it ads. Also there is no guarantee that personal information or corporate secrets won't someday be revealed.

      Likewise, the storage scheme will be the same thing. Google now gets to look at your entire life, and figure out how which of thier clients can help you with your lifestyle. Again, your privacy may no be specifically violated, at least in the near term, but it is still too much of a price for me to pay, when i can get the same thing without the risks for $10 a month.

      --
      "She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
    4. Re:That's just what we need! by iamlucky13 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Funny, but also a good point. However, I do have a fair number of relatively low security risk files that it would be handy to access anywhere without carrying them on a flash drive. Flash drives are useable almost everywhere, but not quite, and they can get lost, which makes them as much or more of a security risk as files on a fileserver. I actually save a bunch of miscellaneous bits of information as drafts on my gmail account for convenience, but it would be nice to do so as something other than plain text. I'm pretty sure I'm not alone.

      One would also expect that a google online drive would be roughly as secure as their mail account (same username and password, potentially different avenues for hacking, however). Email security is pretty important, so if a person is willing to trust their personal communications to Google, why not a few files? Besides, it's probably a lot more secure than the average user's personal computer.

    5. Re:That's just what we need! by Phishcast · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Someone has to add the obligitory "They can't look at my encrypted files" comment. This is it. I'd be okay with storing data I cared about on a Google server, it's my option to encrypt it.

    6. Re:That's just what we need! by electroniceric · · Score: 4, Insightful

      My guess is that Google sees document storage as a beachhead for online word processing, etc. Convincing a business to adopt that kind of stuff will be very hard, because they have to change how their processes work. But if you're an indivudal logged into GMail, and you have a Word doc (or even better, a PDF) or some photos you want to edit and send back to someone, and a link saying "Edit this document" comes up, you might well want to do that. And because they're on Google's servers, it doesn't cannibalize their ad-based business model, and better still, it does cannibalize Microsoft's business model. Basically, by starting with documents, they can move piecemeal into application hosting without losing many options. Then if businesses are interested, they sell ad-free versions, hosted or non-hosted.

    7. Re:That's just what we need! by veganboyjosh · · Score: 2, Insightful

      at about the point where you get free email, search, news, pics, video, storage space, etc, no?

  3. It slipped out by truthsearch · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
    1. Re:It slipped out by ROOK*CA · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Personally I'd probably use something like this to backup all my media files (Songs, Movies, Audiobooks, etc.,) In which case who cares if it ends up all over the Internet, Sharing is good, sharing MP3's, well that's even better. :)

    2. Re:It slipped out by GigsVT · · Score: 3, Interesting

      That raises an interesting possibility. If you upload a file to Google that they already have in someone else's gDrive, there's no need for them to keep two copies of it.

      Reminds me of way back when on AOL when AOL would store internal email attachments on their servers. "Pirating" something just meant forwarding an email with the attachment that never hit your local computer, drastically reducing the time required since everyone was on slow modems back then.

      It will be funny when the first SHA or MD5 collision hits though, they'll have to be very careful with that if they go with a system like this to reduce redundant file storage.

      --
      I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
    3. Re:It slipped out by ROOK*CA · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Good points, I suspect it a bit different under the hood for single instance attachments in an email system versus single instance mass storage, since from an email standpoint you can always trace back an attachment to the original message (i.e. theres a paret-child relationship), and single instance normally doesn't work if say 2 senders send the same file in 2 original (i.e not forwards or replys) messages (in this case the attachment would be stored twice).

      For a mass storage system to do this it seems to me it would have to somehow checksum every file and then compare that checksum to the checksum of every other file stored within the system to determine if it's already got a copy or not, seems to me with a very high volume of transactions this would be a very expensive operation to do versus just allocating enough storage space to store multiple instances. You also might run into problems with encrypted files, since the checksum of an encrypted file could very well match that of a totally different unencrypted file, and thus one or the other would get tossed out in error to keep a single instance on the system.

  4. Encryption by Neil+Watson · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Encrypt your files.

    --
    UNIX/Linux Consulting
    1. Re:Encryption by drgonzo59 · · Score: 5, Insightful
      Of course, to NSA/FBI/CIA your encrypted GDrive that holds tax documents and family photos will look like it holds al Qaeda training manuals. So when the CIA takes you to Egypt for some fun interrogation and put a knife to your neck, you'll happily give them your passphrase so they can see what's on your GDrive.

      Remember, the idea of a honest executive branch that will got to a court to get a permission to spy on you, or that you will get a speedy trial, or even a lawyer is history. Through fear we have allowed the government to become what it is now, blame the neo-conservatives for that if you want. Watch the "Power Of Nightmares" movie, I just saw it two days ago, quite enlightening, not totally objective but nevertheless it was worth my time (3 hours).

    2. Re:Encryption by Firehed · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I never said they couldn't get the password, I just said they'd need it. I'm sure it would be a lot less trouble for them to just take your machine in full due to whatever law that was they put in place, rather than drag you off to Egypt to force out the password. Because if they did that, they'd probably have to kill you - if you're geeky enough to encrypt your files (not especially, but still enough), I'm sure you'd post the incident on every forum you're a member of (or livejournal or whatever, or maybe upload the shot you got off your cameraphone to Flickr). IIRC, they can steal your computer and not even tell you for two months what happened or why (or perhaps longer, but it's not as if you're not going to notice that you're computer's gone missing); you might go on the assumption you've been burgled until it shows up in a battered USPS box on your front steps.

      --
      How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
    3. Re:Encryption by vhogemann · · Score: 4, Interesting
      Better yet,

      This theoretical GDrive could encrypt your files automagically, this way only YOU from YOUR COMPUTER should be able to view them. Google can skip all these legal problems claiming that they just provide the storage, but doesnt have acess to the contents of the files.

      Of couse GDrive will send some meta-information about the files to feed Googles TextAds, probably the same info that GoogleDesktop send, and keep some kind of hash to identify identical files, in order to save server storage.

      Just my $0.2

      --
      ---- You know how some doctors have the Messiah complex - they need to save the world? You've got the "Rubik's" complex
    4. Re:Encryption by krbvroc1 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I think he means they would apply a 'text' scanner to a 'binary' encrypted document and there are odds that those letters could be found in many binary document. Thereby you might still be 'flagged' coincidentally.

    5. Re:Encryption by Kadin2048 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      That's not much of a commentary on Google, is it? I mean, if they're willing to take you to Egypt (or wherever) to perform some "rubber hose cryptanalysis," then there's nothing really stopping them from coming in and taking your computer, too. So having your data in encrypted form up on Google's servers really isn't increasing your exposure or risk any.

      In fact, if Google encrypted everyone's files when they uploaded them on their GDrive, then it would probably limit your exposure, since then the encryption couldn't be an immediate red-flag. It's easy to single out people who are using encryption and get their passwords through some other means (keysniffing, etc.) when its only a few per thousand or million users, when it becomes universally used then it's much more difficult.

      However as other people have pointed out I'm not sure that Google will offer any encryption, not because of government coercion but because it makes the data much harder to index (for advertising and searching purposes) and compress (you don't think that your 325 MB GMail box really takes up 325 MB on disk, do you?).

      --
      "Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
    6. Re:Encryption by drgonzo59 · · Score: 4, Informative

      Honestly, if they just hint that my wife/parents/children just might end up in an "accident", it would be enogh for me to shut up. If they could capture a German citizen (El Masri), put a diaper on him, drug him and fly him God knows where for harsh interrogations, then release him in the middle of Albania five month later, then I wouldn't hold it above them to harm my family to get me to shut up... I am surprized that guy even had enough guts to talk about it. I am sure you've heard about him, here is a link on the ACLU website about his case.

    7. Re:Encryption by vhogemann · · Score: 2, Interesting

      This metadata can be mined localy, at your computer, before your files are encypted and sent to their servers. This way they will be also sparing their server time, using your machine to process the metadata needed to feed TextAds.

      --
      ---- You know how some doctors have the Messiah complex - they need to save the world? You've got the "Rubik's" complex
    8. Re:Encryption by Traa · · Score: 2, Insightful

      However as other people have pointed out I'm not sure that Google will offer any encryption, not because of government coercion but because it makes the data much harder to index (for advertising and searching purposes) and compress (you don't think that your 325 MB GMail box really takes up 325 MB on disk, do you?).

      The solution is right there. Google should want to handle the encryption themselves rather then have the user upload encrypted data because it will allow them to first index your data, then compress it and then encrypt it.

    9. Re:Encryption by jrockway · · Score: 3, Interesting

      > makes the data much harder to index

      1) Upload
      2) Index
      3) Compress
      4) Encrypt.

      Problem solved.

      --
      My other car is first.
    10. Re:Encryption by drgonzo59 · · Score: 4, Insightful
      In a sense you are saying this:
      1) Upload to Google
      2) Google indexes it
      3) Google compresses it
      4) Google encrypts it => Google has the key.

      After this is done ask yourself, how is your data now more secure against the government looking at it and against other party looking at it, than if you skipped #4 and didn't encrypt. What happens next is this:

      1) FBI/NSA/Whatever1984Agency asks Google for you info
      2) Google decrypts it
      3) Google hands it over it Uncle Sam
      4) You have pictures there of you family at Disney World
      5) By accident a large trashcan appears in one of the shots
      6) Uncle Sam assumes you are scouting for places to hide a dirty bomb
      7) You get arrested and detained for 5 months in some unknown prison

      So how about the updated procedure to avoid the unpleasand Uncle Sam encounter:
      1) Encrypt using a long passphrase that only you will know
      2) Upload
      3) End


      This would work only if everyone would be doing it. Otherwise, as someone has mentioned above, if you are the only one of 10000 people who encrypts his stuff, you will look suspicious and they'll find a why to get the key from you to look what you got in there.

  5. Why give everything to google? by IntelliAdmin · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Why give everything to google? by Reality+Master+101 · · Score: 4, Interesting
      Obviously Paranoids won't bother to use this service.

      But for the rest of us, the idea of a cheap online backup (or even free, which would Rock Hard) of our ENTIRE hard drive would be very, very nice. It would be cool if Google provided automatic encryption, but I wouldn't care if they didn't.

      --
      Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
    2. Re:Why give everything to google? by Telastyn · · Score: 5, Insightful

      As opposed to trusting all of the intermediaries between you and google? Personally, I trust google to protect my privacy far more than say... Comcast, who has direct unencrypted access to every non-ssl web browsing session, gmail use, or email sent.

    3. Re:Why give everything to google? by TubeSteak · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Even if they do provide encryption, nothing is stopping a 3rd party from writing up their own encryption overlay.

      Your encryption + their encryption = fuck the police

      --
      [Fuck Beta]
      o0t!
    4. Re:Why give everything to google? by garcia · · Score: 2, Insightful

      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.

      Because most people see that getting something "free" in return for giving up their personal information is worth it. Hell, there have been countless "studies" that asked people for their personal identifiable information including mother's maiden name and birthdate with nothing more than a phone call.

    5. Re:Why give everything to google? by Breakfast+Pants · · Score: 2, Interesting

      You know, if you ever get divorced you can at least wipe your porn off of your computers in case that comes up as an issue. It isn't clear that you will be able to do so with such a service from Google. Also, every bit of communication you made with your extra-marital lover over gtalk will be available as well (I know, I know, you can opt out of this bit).

      --

      --

      WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
    6. Re:Why give everything to google? by slashdot.org · · Score: 2, Informative

      That's what things like Truecrypt are for.

      Of course the majority of people will not use this and happily hand over all their private information...

    7. Re:Why give everything to google? by wolfdvh · · Score: 2, Funny
      "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),"

      In other news, Google announces plans to purchase all hard drive makers"

  6. Didn't we have this in 1997? by cjsnell · · Score: 4, Informative

    XDrive, Yahoo Briefcase, anybody?

    Of course, we had Web-based e-mail in '96, too, and look what Google did with that.

    1. Re:Didn't we have this in 1997? by hal9000(jr) · · Score: 4, Insightful

      XDrive, Yahoo Briefcase, anybody?

      Dude, get on the fan-boi band wagon. It doesn't matter if anything came before. If google does, it will be "better."

      Seriously, this might be useful but I would definently want to encrypt that data. It still doesn't obviate the need for local back-ups. My data back-ups are routinely over 4GB is size. No way am I tranporting that up my stinking little DSL connection. But I could see a use for those few must have docs.

    2. Re:Didn't we have this in 1997? by General+Wesc · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You're right, Google isn't coming up with an entirely new concept. All they're is doing is building a better mousetrap, and for some strange reason, the world is beating a path to their door. :-)

  7. Their Objective by rolfwind · · Score: 5, Insightful
    From the article:
    "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.


    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.
    1. Re:Their Objective by xiphoris · · Score: 3, Funny

      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.

      If you take the pessimistic stance that marketing will always happen, regardless, then at least in this scenario you receive marketing that might actually interest you instead of, oh, I don't know, notification about a new brand of tampon (the sorts of adverts that I always see on TV for some reason).

      For example, Google would know that by reading Slashdot, you must be male, and automatically exclude you from receiving such misdirected advertisements. Likewise, if Google were in control of all the advertising, the Slashdot crowd would never get another v14gr4 ad again! (since they have no use for it) :-)

  8. Re:Mr. and Mrs. Reboot by ackthpt · · Score: 2, Informative
    Since they're using Windows they'd better back up often.

    Ok, that looks like a swipe at Windows and probably not too justified unless you're insinuating this is a hedge against malicious worms.

    I'd be more concerned about hard-drive quality. One of my 80GB drives (yeah, I know it's an antique at that size) is making funny noises so it's probably time to move the contents off to another drive (one of the nearly as antique 160GB drives.)

    --

    A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
  9. Google's Plans by sepharious · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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...
    1. Re:Google's Plans by Transdimentia · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Google's job won't be to create this, it already exists (http://www.openafs.org/). They will make it fast by meticulously mirroring 100,000,000TB of the worlds data to their innocuous looking cabinent/cellserver on your street corner, and your mom's streetcorner, and GW's streetcorner, etc... and pouring resources into integrating it better.

  10. Re:This already exists... by ZeroExistenZ · · Score: 2, Insightful

    How come I don't trust signing inthere?

    --
    I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
  11. Gmail Space Firefox Extension by Slant675 · · Score: 3, Informative

    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
  12. Here's the deal by mslinux · · Score: 4, Funny

    As soon as Google gives me all of their data, I'll give them mine.

    1. Re:Here's the deal by Petronius · · Score: 4, Funny

      They already have yours.

      --
      there's no place like ~
  13. In the meantime by Johnso · · Score: 4, Funny
    Until Google offers this service, feel free to upload all of your confidential files to my server:

    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.
    1. Re:In the meantime by baldass_newbie · · Score: 3, Informative

      This is what makes the parent even funnier.

      --
      The opposite of progress is congress
    2. Re:In the meantime by mjeppsen · · Score: 4, Funny

      I tried to upload my secret data, but I couldn't connect...

      Damn, already slashdotted!

      -MJ

  14. scary by pvt_medic · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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
  15. in addition by sepharious · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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...
  16. Something just doesn't sit right... by Kihaji · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Google "accidently" leaked information to the world, so, if they cant keep their own documents secure, why should I trust them with mine?

  17. gdrive.com by pvt_medic · · Score: 2, Informative

    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
  18. GMail is already online storage by digitaldc · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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
    1. Re:GMail is already online storage by stunt_penguin · · Score: 4, Insightful

      So you think that a random Google employee has access to your inbox do you?

      No-one at google reads your, mine or anyone else's email.

      They're scanned for keywords by a machine and spat out into your browser. The same goes for your search results, too.

      There's a big difference between someone reading your emails like some kind of wartime censor and a script running on a machine that adds contextual information. Do you object to Google adding BR tags to your email where it sees a carriage return tag (or whatever) in an incoming email. Are they 'reading' your mail then?

      *walks off mumbling about paranoid americans*

      --
      When the posters fear their moderators, there is tyranny; when the moderators fears the posters, there is liberty.
    2. Re:GMail is already online storage by Jugalator · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You mean, like no ISP or other webmail service can? No wait...

      --
      Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
  19. Rapid sharing? by RyoShin · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  20. As apps go online, does plain storage lose value? by lux55 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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):

    http://www.putfwd.com/index/news-app/story.35/titl e.an-online-file-storage-manifesto

    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
  21. Leaked.... or Released? by djsmiley · · Score: 2, Funny

    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
  22. The Blog with the story and original PPT/PDF by ccozan · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

  23. Previous Solutions by Midnight+Thunder · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.
  24. What does Google get out of this? by babbling · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.

  25. Encryption plugin by tacokill · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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....

  26. Google Live CD by this+great+guy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  27. Re:Rapid sharing? - It's being done as we speak by Kru)(fen · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.

  28. Re:Here's why... by Reality+Master+101 · · Score: 2, Interesting
    just because you delete it doesn't mean *they* will delete it - think documents you might regret seeing in court.

    If I had anything that sensitive, I would encrypt it anyway.

    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?

    I didn't say it would definitely be free, but if it would, sure, let them advertise for me. It would be totally worth it for a free backup.

    you don't know who will have access to your data.

    Like I said, Paranoids won't be interested in this service. I'm not particularly paranoid, so I'm not too worried about it. Do you worry about who might be breaking into your office at night to read your docs?

    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.

    Definitely worth it. First of all, a DVD is only 4.7GB, which ain't much these days. Second of all, you have to DO IT. That's always the achilles heal of backups. I should say that my current backup strategy is to use Connected Online Backup, which does it for me automatically every night. It's a good service, but it doesn't do my whole drive.

    --
    Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
  29. This could be workable... by BalkanBoy · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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
  30. Good for Web Apps by moria · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.

  31. Google Firefox by vinn01 · · Score: 3, Interesting


    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.

  32. Bandwidth is the real issue by Drestin · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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...

  33. At last, an actual Turing machine... by podperson · · Score: 2, Funny

    With infinite storage...

    1) Invent infinite storage device.
    2) ???
    3) Profit!

  34. I think people are missing the obvious by sasha328 · · Score: 2, Informative

    I have been reading this thread at higher mods because of the number of comments, so I may have missed someone else mentioning this:

    Anyone remember the first time Apple offered .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.
    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.