Lost in the deafening noise around CES and next week’s Apple announcement was a news nugget that got minimal attention but will nonetheless positively impact users of smartbooks and other mobile devices.
Google has begun demonstrating an online storage service that it’s not calling GDrive, but which one blogger says looks very much like GDrive, a service the company itself described during an analyst meeting back in March of 2006.
The service lets users upload any file type (videos, images, audio, Zip, etc.) to Google Docs, provided the file is under 250 megabytes. A Google product manager told TechCrunch that the service will be introduced in the next few weeks. There are no bandwidth charges, and the first 1GB of storage is free. Each additional GB will cost users twenty-five cents.
This service, whatever it’s called, joins a list of companies that are trying to carve out a niche in the growing market for online storage. Most are not household names, although one highly-rated service, Mozy, is owned by EMC. A recent review of the top thirteen services shows that most share the same features, including remote and mobile access, public and private file sharing, scheduled backups, file search and security. Six of the thirteen companies rated have pricing plans that start at less than $5 for 5GB of storage.
Google’s foray into online storage follows high-profile flops by HP, AOL and Yahoo, which were beset by dinky capacity limits, outages and ease-of-use problems. Moreover, the services themselves were generally uninspired and lacked innovation.
Online storage service providers are doing more than just storing and backing up files and data. Some of today’s services offer cool features like automatic synchronization of files across platforms (PC, Mac, smartphone).
More details on Google’s service are still forthcoming, but with its total emphasis on ease of use, speed and innovation, the company will likely raise the bar for others in the sector.
And that’s good news for buyers of smartbooks and anyone interested in a mobile Web.
Lisa
