There is no such thing as offline in the universe of Google. (I'm not really joking either)

...when are they gonna start a WiFi service and call it, say, GSpot?

Your Files Are Belong To Us

Looks like a great place for some of the Data Protection Squad @ HMRC to use this as a mechanism to share data, instead of those so-yesterday pesky CD's and DVD's in the post as a better, and infinitely more secure mechanism to share important information. After all we know Google is a major proponent of data privacy after all......just like HMRC and their legion of PPP goons!

Thi is all well and good but what's the point of having dozens of Gigabytes of my files hosted remotely if my connection is too slow for it all to be practical?

I mean, it's not like I can access all my 50 GB of music "on the fly" with Virgin's crappy connection (especially if it's "shaped").

Federico el Sueco

Us blokes will never find our files again! ;-)

Sadly, those innovations are already taken. GSpot is a tool in the movie codecs development kit (http://www.headbands.com/gspot/) and as far as this GDrive idea goes, if they really wanted to simplify it and make it as user-accessible as a real extra hard drive, then what they want to make is basically a version of Novell's NetDrive program which has been freely available for many years now - basically, it maps an FTP location as a network drive, and stores your user/pass details, so you can drag/drop/cut/paste/browse just as if it were any normal network drive.

See: http://www.augsburg.edu/stucomp/connect/offcampus_PC.html#netdrive1

Having a folder (or a tree) on your drive that is in sync with storage at Google, so that you have access to certain files at any time - even when not on the net or not at your computer at home/work

24/7 file-sharing from an anonymous GDrive account?

Wonder if you can boot from it too ;p

4 posts (until now...) and nothing from Anon. C. Wonderful. But will it last..?

Maybe you'd be better thinking of Novell's iFolder. Keeps stuff on your PC, but auto-syncs with the server whenever it sees it, and the iFolder server copy can be accessed via a web browser as well.

Search on google! Its a tiny app that maps your gmail account to what resembles a hard drive in your my computer. I have used it for years!! Its not official though!!

I was thinking the same thing. Could have multiple mirrors on a few local hard disks so that the files were accessible offline at more than one location as long as the machines were online to sync up from time to time.

Does sound kind of funny though. Great new service from Google: store files on your own hard disk, accessible offline! It's a revolution!

If it runs on my desktop and my phone, that means my *Mac* and *Linux* desktops too does it ?

# mount /mnt/gdrive ?

Yeah, Omnidrive does a similar kind of thing. You get about 1GB free and you can pay for additional storage. Windows/Mac client only atm.

Google will probably do something similar with a vastly increased basic storage amount.

http://www.omnidrive.com

"it's easier to share and access your data from anywhere when it's online, in one place"

Yep, easier for the criminals and hackers too. And more so for them probably, since they likely will not be affected by the downtime your connection has for whatever reason.

No really, someone should gut this fish once and for all. My data is mine, and it stays on my computer. If I need to bring it anywhere, there is a host of possibilities that are easy, readily available and a lot more secure than under-attack-24/7 online storage.

A CD or DVD RW is available to everyone these days for a pittance. If 4.7GB is not enough, USB keys reach 8GB now, which is more than enough for most people. If that is still not enough, you have portable HDDs that connect via USB easily and reliably, which gives you tens of GB of storage, if not hundreds. Some of then even connect via SATA 2 links, which ups the bandwidth nicely.

And all of those solutions are local and secure as long as you don't leave them on a park bench unattended. Much better, in my opinion, than leaving that data on public servers any hacker can get interested in just for the heck of it.

Anyone with a decent company or home broadband can access all their data anywhere without Google sifting through it.

I use VNC or VPN or both.

This is the more efficient than any 100% 24/7 hosted service.

If I want online & backed up by vendor, I have two hosting companies (they have no interest in content of my data), one in USA and one in Europe.

Anyone using Google or anyone like Google for this has lost grip on reality.

I just read the other article about Google or more specifically about it's founder's not living as hippies anymore, but enjoying the rich american dream ($100 million houses etc). Well good for them, but then reading this story and still thinking of hippies and tree huging.... and i wonder

How many data-centres with just how many million spinning little disks will it take to give google users 100% backup their 100GB (average?) data pile that is currently filling their local hard disk and maybe a another 120GB of external USB hard drive where they have the rest of the their pics, movies, mp3s?

Storing the data twice uses twice the energy to run twice the computers...

Maybe google should come up with a novel way to power it's internet empire...gNuclear perhaps.

I don't think Google should be allowed to develop any new apps until GMail is finally out of its perpetual Beta.

A bit like my Mum doesn't let me have pudding until my dinner plate is clear.

I wonder if google would be enthusiastic to host my heavly encrypted drives

Certainly sounds like a really good wares distro channel...

Guess theres no need to worry about alt.bin newsgroups anymore.

would love to see RI Ass of America try to serve google...

It will be a cold day in hell that I trust all my documents etc to a remote server that I have no control over

Surley after the "Turn it off, then back on again" rule, isn't the next most important mantra in IT to "Deny physical access to the server"

I know where my remote hosting centre is and who runs it, I also know that my server is locked in a cage.

How can I trust Google to store my business information, when I don't even know the location of the servers, let alone what miscreants have access.

Mage is spot on, use VPN to connect to your secure server, sitting in your secure data centre, to access your secure data.

Customs and Excise anyone...

Might not be the worst thing in the world. Just use a truecrypt volume (or two) on the "gdrive", maybe PGP all the files inside the volume. Lets see Google access it then. Of course the paranoid "radicals" out there wouldn't have a killswitch to delete/melt/destroy the data.

Apple give you 10G with your .Mac account and you get an iDIsk device icon in your Finder to use as a remote drive.

BTW I currently have about 300GB of data on my local storage - I wonder what size of storage Google are thinking of?

I think iDisk is available for users of Other machines too.

OR....if you get bored of waiting for this to come out here is plan B.

1) zip up hard drive

2) encrypt zip file

3) upload to the p2p app of your choice with some nasty porn name.

voila. Your files are now accessible from any location connected to the net and you can download with the maximum download your connection can support and your data is safely stored in many locations.

probably about as hack proof as a single big server farm run by google too.

So we're back to the era of the mainframe computer where everything runs and is stored centrally - albeit on a global scale. Anyone doing anything new today?

It does kind of vindicate Thomas Watson's fabled (mis)quote, "there is a world market for maybe five computers."

Don't forget about google.org

http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/pressrel/20071127_green.html

Yup, I've used it for years too.

GMail Drive shell extension:

http://www.viksoe.dk/code/gmail.htm

G.

Great, Mat, just great. I now have coffee all over my keyboard.

RE: ...If cloud is silly, find a better "monicker"!

How about: "GoogleLand" ??