GDrive Coming Soon – The long awaited GDrive by Google is coming soon to a PC near you and it just might end up replacing the PC as you know it.
Google is set to launch GDrive – a “cloud computing” service or virtual hard drive that would enable users to access their personal computer from any internet connection, according to industry reports.
The Google Drive, or “GDrive”, could kill off the desktop computer, which relies on a powerful hard drive. Instead of using a local hard drive, a user’s personal files and operating system could be stored on Google’s own servers and accessed via the internet.
The long-rumoured GDrive is expected to be launched this year, according to news sources which described it as “the most anticipated Google product so far”.
GDrive is a paradigm shift away from Microsoft’s Windows operating system, which runs inside most of the world’s computers, in favour of “cloud computing”, where the processing and storage is done thousands of miles away in remote data centres.
Home and business users are increasingly turning to web-based services, usually free, ranging from email, such as Hotmail and Gmail, and digital photo storage, such as Flickr and Picasa, to more applications for documents and spreadsheets, such as Google Apps.
A lost laptop or a crashed hard drive doesn’t jeopardise the data because it is regularly saved in “the cloud” and can be accessed via the web from any machine.
The GDrive would follow this logic to its conclusion by shifting the contents of a user’s hard drive to the Google servers. The PC would be a simpler, cheaper device acting as a portal to the web, perhaps via an adaptation of Google’s operating system for mobile phones, Android. Users would think of their computer as software rather than hardware.
Google continues to refuse to confirm the GDrive launch, but acknowledged the growing demand for cloud computing.
Dave Armstrong, head of product and marketing for Google Enterprise, said: “There’s a clear direction … away from people thinking, ‘This is my PC, this is my hard drive,’ to ‘This is how I interact with information, this is how I interact with the web.’”
And that’s the latest on the GDrive coming soon.
Tags: cloud computing, computer, gdrive, google, google drive, virtual hard drive