Download Squad

Ever since Google catapulted itself into the email arena by offering way more online storage space for email than any of its competitors, rumors have been flying that Google was going to find another user for all that server space: online data storage. In fact, some folks have been crafty enough to turn GMail's 5+ GB of storage into a virtual online hard drive. But the official Google hard drive or GDrive has remained in the realm of speculation.

Now the Wall Street Journal reports that a GDrive is coming, although it's not clear exactly what the service will actually be called. Apparently for a while the project was called simply "my stuff."

If the Journal is correct, the new service will let users store photos, music, movies, Office documents and other media online where they can be accessed from any computer. Google will probably offer a certain amount of storage for free and then charge for more space, which shouldn't come as any surprise because that's exactly what the company is doing with its PicasaWeb/email plan. And it's exactly what all of the other companies in this space, like Box.net or Omnidrive do.

But that raises an interesting point. It doesn't sound like Google is going to offer anything that you can't already get today from an existing service. The only thing that really makes the mythical GDrive special is that it would be coming from Google, which means that many people who have never heard of Box.net might actually use it. So don't be surprised if Google launches its new online storage service and you're less than impressed with the amount of free space you get. On the other hand, Google is also well positioned to squash the competition by offering a ridiculous amount of free storage, integration with Google Docs, and other services that could make the GDrive hard to beat.