San Francisco — Reports for months are swirling that search engine giant Google is all set to rebranding its massively popular online document service Google Docs, into a virtual hard drive in the cloud, dubbed as Google Drive.
According to TechCrunch’s report, the long-awaited Google Drive is set for imminent release, after a prominent blogger and social media consultant Johannes Wigand, who captured and posted a blurry screenshot of what seemed to be a new version of Google Docs, called Drive, on the Web.
This blurred image is courtesy of TechCrunch
The avove blurry screenshot that Wigand snapped appears to show a slightly modified version of Google Docs, dubbed as Drive. The screen appeared for a few seconds in “an event powered by Google,” Wigand reports.
But on a closer look, it strongly becomes clear that Google changed the word “Docs” on the upper left-hand corner of the screen to “Drive”.
Apart from that, the folder menu has also received some minor changes. The folder menu is labeled differently as well: It’s called “My Google Drive” instead of “My Collections.”
“Expect Google Drive to reside at drive.google.com (though not operational yet). But, it is not clear how docs.google.com (the current home of Docs) will be used–perhaps as the home of the word processor app or maybe it will just redirect,” TechCrunch reports.
However, TechCrunch has since endorsed the existence of Google Drive, and has said that the company currently uses the Web-based file hosting service internally. Further, a consumer-based version may roll out soon, although no specific timetable has been set.
TechCrunch’s MG Siegler, while elaborating on the screenshot, added that the only major addition to GDrive will be native syncing software that enables users to move documents from one computer or mobile device to another through a simple drag-and-drop system.
Nevertheless, for Docs users, the introduction of Google Drive would not change much. Google Docs currently boasts much of the same functionality that was said to be included in Drive before the company killed it off in 2008. Since then, Docs has become an online storage site for more than just documents. Users can now leverage Docs to store and share images, videos, PDF files and presentations.
Interestingly, the launch of Google Drive, while similar to Docs, could spell bad news for Dropbox, Box.Net and other competitors in the file sharing space.
Although Google’s pricing will probably be in line with its rivals, the sheer convenience of accessing files through the same domain as your email should give Google a leg up in the competition. The name recognition can not hurt things either. Currently, Dropbox offers free storage up to 2GB, and then an additional 50GB for $10 per month. Box.net has the same pay model, but offers 5GB of free storage. Currently, Google Docs provides only 1GB of free storage and has users pay $5 for each additional 20GB.
As the search engine titan these days is busy promoting its newly launched social media network, the big question yet to be addressed, however, is whether the Docs rebranding will bring Google+ integration?