I’ve been saying for quite a while, at least 5 years, that we aren’t far away from a time when your desktop computer will be little more than a browser, with all of your applications and data stored server side–somewhere out there. The day may be closer than you think according to the Wall Street Journal.
Google is preparing a service that would let users store on its computers essentially all of the files they might keep on their personal-computer hard drives — such as word-processing documents, digital music, video clips and images, say people familiar with the matter. The service could let users access their files via the Internet from different computers and mobile devices when they sign on with a password, and share them online with friends. It could be released as early as a few months from now, one of the people said.
I think this is a good and bad thing. Good because it will open up the ability to store and share information between individuals. Bad in that Google is the entity doing it. As far as I can imagine, no competitor has both the resources and the power to do it. Microsoft? Maybe, but they are going in so many directions and have their fingerss in a lot of pies. Google is web focused.
Funny how the world of computers keeps cycling through the same ideas. Now, the thought seems to be to turn the PC back into a smart terminal again. Then, I guess, we’ll turn it into a dumb terminal again to match the usual dumb user.
Yeah…
When I was in college I worked in the computing center at school babysitting mainframes. That means I spent most of my time at a dumb VT terminal reading stuff off of newsgroups and bulletin boards. Every now and then I’d use lynx to browse around that world wide web.
Now, here I sit…
Many people have blindly believed Google will dominate the Internet industry. which is not really the case. In fact, out of the search market, Google has not been successful. This doesn’t hurt for Google to get a lot of media exposure. Taking for example, GDrive was rumored for years… but the real online storage king is always a small innovator, not a big behemoth like Google. I recommend everybody to try DriveHQ Online Storage and Online Backup service (www.drivehq.com). I feel the usability, the group and sub-group file sharing, the advanced folder synchronization features are really killer apps. Even if Google launches its online storage service, it will be too late to catch up.
Cool nyit! Thanks for the info. I’m checking into it right now. $30 a year is reasonable for 2Gb, plus I’m assuming you aren’t snooping people’s info.
There is the possibility that you guys will really take off. If so, what will it take for Google to buy you?