The 900-pound gorilla in the search space is apparently developing a service that will let users to store every scrap of data from their computers’ hard drives on Google’s servers.
Google Inc. is preparing to offer massive online storage to Web users, creating a mirror image of data stored on consumer hard drives, according to company documents that were mistakenly released on the Web.
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 analyst’s presentation day meeting March 3. But the slides disappeared soon after buzz began in the blogosphere.
A Google representative confirmed March 6 that the Mountain View, Calif., firm did remove some of the presentation slides because they "were not intended for publication." But the spokesperson would not disclose anything further.
According to a blog posting of notes from these slides, Google is at work on a total of three projects, named Gdrive, GDS and Lighthouse. Each project is based on the goal of bringing about "infinite storage" and "infinite bandwidth," according to versions of the pulled presentation slides now posted online.
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.
Copies of the notes were captured by a handful of bloggers and shared around the Web. The company subsequently took down its original PowerPoint slide presentation and replaced it with a 94-page Adobe Acrobat file, devoid of the speaker notes.
When asked to confirm plans for a GDrive, a Google spokeswoman declined to comment on any specific service but confirmed that presentation containing the notes had been mistakenly released on the Web.
We deleted the slide notes because they were not intended for publication, Google spokeswoman Lynn Fox said. The deleted presentation had appeared on Google’s investor relations site at http://investor.google.com/ppt/20060302_analyst_day.ppt, which has been removed from the site after the bloggers spread the news.
We are constantly working on new ways to enhance our products and services for users, but have nothing to announce at this time, she said.
The retracted management notes go on to state that GDrive is one of several efforts in this direction but faces bandwidth constraints for many users with slower network speeds.
Google’s Gmail e-mail service could be considered the precursor to these projects. Gmail account holders have up to 1M of free space, which for many is an amount they will never use.
Chief Executive Eric Schmidt in his presentation made a cryptic comment that one goal of Google was to "store 100 percent" of consumer information.
Too Late, Google:
Some quick-on-the-keyboard people, including Greg Linden, author of the Geeking with Greg blog, had already read the unedited version and released tidbits of information about Google’s newest plans on their blogs.
The announcement sparked many questions about trust and privacy, as well as how Google would manage to turn a profit from offering storage to the masses.
The speaker’s notes briefly mentioned three services that will play a crucial role in Google’s "Store 100%" plan: "GDS," "Lighthouse" and "Gdrive."
GDS is apparently Google’s Desktop Search and, in this context, most likely refers to "Search Across Computers," the just launched component of the service that enables users to temporarily store copies of their hard drives on Google’s servers and then search for information across all the computers they have access to.
For example, someone could use their desktop machine to search for a document created on their laptop.
Gdrive has been described as a kind of unlimited storage account, according to the speaker’s notes, storing 100 percent of a user’s data on Google’s servers and turning personal computers into temporary data caches.
Lighthouse was referred to in the presentation’s notes as an "access list," perhaps a security permissions application that determines who can access what information stored on Google’s servers.
Google’s Firefox browser team is also at work on the network end of things, according to the slides. Tactically speaking, the initiative "suits our strength vis-à-vis Microsoft and is also of great value to the user," Google wrote in the slides.
Google says it could save users from potential computer data crashes by keeping a "golden copy" of user data on Google’s centralized computers and rely on the user’s local hard drive simply for speedy access to one’s data, the notes state.
Recently Google began offering an optional service that stores copies of the text portions of a computer user’s data on Google’s computers. The service lets users search data stored on local computers from other machines via Google accounts.
While offering more convenient access to user data, the service stoked debate about the dangers of users storing so much of their digital lives on Google machines.
Two weeks ago analyst firm Gartner warned enterprises to disable or establish strict security polices for the “Search Across Computers” application, citing security concerns.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation also issued a warning stating that using Search Across Computers opened the door for personal or corporate information to be accessed by law enforcement via subpoena.
That’s a rather thinly veiled reference to how Google thinks the feature will resonate with enterprises, which is a Microsoft stronghold that Google has been attacking with its own business-focused features.
None of these are particularly novel technologies — online storage and remote access is offered by Box.net, Xdrive and Yahoo, among others. But Google tends to take tried and true ideas and remakes them into cool new services.
Who else could have gotten us all excited about e-mail again? "Google’s offering could be interesting for two reasons," said Linden.
"First, they have a tendency to do things at much larger scale than others; note the impact that GMail’s 2G limit had on the existing online mail products," he said.
"Second, GDrive appears to be part of a much broader and bolder plan to move all of your data online, as indicated in the other notes in the Google analyst day slide deck."
The announcement sparked some snarky comments on the wisdom of storing all of one’s data on a commercial server.
If Google does indeed add these new features, it is also likely to force the hand of its major competitors Yahoo and America Online in addition to Microsoft. Each of these so-called Web portals already offers to store data online, but not an unlimited amount.
People wondered whether the information would be used for marketing purposes or potentially turned over to law enforcement.
"I think, given all the recent publicity surrounding the National Security Agency’s efforts to get at Google’s search engine logs and the renewed interest in online privacy, the public would be wary and reluctant to fully embrace this service," said Greg Sterling, an analyst with The Kelsey Group.
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.
Google would have to go to extraordinary lengths to reassure users that the data were going to be kept private, Sterling added. Even then I think it would be a tough sell.
Meanwhile Microsoft Corp.’s new version of the Windows operating system, called Vista, will emphasize a Web-like search instead of its traditional folder-based navigation.