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.

There's more evidence that the mythical GDrive, Google's mysterious Google storage hard drive, could be real.

Google has apparently updated the name servers on GoogleDrive.com as noted by Garett Rogers. This could be one of the final steps necessary in launching the online storage solution. Could it be built into Google Apps? Or maybe a standalone service? We will have to wait and see.

GoogleDrive.com has been on quite a journey since its original registration in 2004. It sat parked until in 2006 it expired and picked up by a squatter. Then in July of 2007 Google's official domain management company took control on it. Now it's been transferred to Google servers.

Take a look at some other interesting domain names Google owns.

Google acquired JotSpot, the hosted wiki development company, last October, and integration has been a slow process. It initially took a few months to get JotSpot Version 2.9 up and running and integrated with Google systems and released back to those that already had an account, but there has been no news on when it will be publicly available. The last Jot blog entry went over a few changes that they had made up until January 12th of 2007, and said that Version 2.9 was the last JotSpot version produced before migrating.

However, there has recently been news leaked about some new JotSpot help files hosted on Google.com, as well as a new JotSpot group in Google Groups. Could these only be for old Jot users? They don't appear to be linked from anywhere in the current JotSpot version, so they could hold some hope for a new release soon.

What will the new version of JotSpot contain? It could be the perfect location for the rumored GDrive where all of Google's applications, and user's documents could be centrally stored and archived. Only time will tell. But what we do know is that whatever JotSpot is released as, it is expected to be a free service with for-pay upgrades and add-ons.

It would be great if Google had one single location where every service they are offered was centralized, and it appears they're working on one.

After wondering why Google had purchased Jotspot some time ago, GuillaumeB and Google Operating system among others have come to the conclusion that JotSpot could be the start of a home for all of Google's applications and our documents; "The GDrive".

Currently with Jotspot, users can store, share and edit spreadsheets, calendars, files and photos, to-do lists, email lists, and track projects with a project manager. So, in reality it's not that far off from a possible centralized Google GDrive storage area where users could store all of their Google specific spreadsheets, documents, forums, blogs, mail, calendar, and photo galleries in a wiki type format. Could we finally see the GDrive released this year?

Always innovating, and recently told to focus on products that are already in development, the Googleplex has recently leaked a copy of the so-called Platypus client for Gdrive, its service for viewing and storing files on the web. Philipp Lenssen scored a copy, and reports that the product looks like it's intended for Google employees to share and store files. This tool encourages Google employees to use Platypus to store office documents, photos, and notes, virtually everything, except for sensitive data, most likely since the application is still in a testing phase, and not secure enough. Philipp could not get past the login screen, but was able to check out the Help, and the configuration files that were attached to the installer which he has published on his website. Only time will tell if this service will be released for public consumption by Google, and is additional evidence that Google is always innovating.

Do you think that Google purposely sets out to release small details about new and upcoming products, and updates when testing? Or do you think that they are just careless with their testing environment?

With yesterday's announcement from AOL about 5GBs of online storage, the to-be released Windows Live Drive and rumored Google GDrive, all the major players are making strides into providing large amounts of persistent and easily accessible storage to their users.

Except Yahoo! - they've had a storage service forever - Y! Briefcase, but it is dwarfed by these recent developments - 30MB free, upgradable to just 100MB for $35, and a very Web 1.0 interface - no AJAX in sight.

It's not like they are not running large disk services for the backends of several properties - Y! Photos and Flickr offer unlimited storage for image files, so it's not a stretch to imagine them having the capacity to compete if they want to.

So Yahoo!... where's your offering? Is this a game of catch-up like when GMail opened the floodgates on 1GB+ mailboxes, or a case of Yahoo! forgetting an older service and letting it wither away??

There was talk of a Google GDrive in the works a while ago. It was said to be some kind of mass storage area for user to store whatever they wanted, and be able to access it from anywhere.

Enter Platypus. Philipp Lenssen got some news about this possible new service, with an archived version from Corsin, who thankfully made a backup of what he came across. Corsin came across this page by doing some URL typing.

Google's Platypus Gdrive has the tagline of "A filer for the whole world. But better." Platypus enables you to store files on your C drive of on the filer.

If your computer crashes, or you get a new one, you can reinstall this Platypus software, and you files will be automatically downloaded and synched onto your new machine.

You can Sync files across many different computers, and operating systems.

You can view your files across the web.

You can share certain files to multiple people.

If you are not able to get an internet connection, all of your files are still available.

It is also said that this new Platypus application will be available in Windows, Mac and Linux formats. Word is that Justin Rosenstein, the Product Manager for the Google Page Creator is working on this project as well.

There is no official news as to what this application is, and to whether it is truly in development at Google, but we will be keeping our eyes open for this very interesting one. Interestingly enough, Google has called itself "The Platypus of the Internet".

Goodness gracious, Google's at it again. Not content to store your email and a few paltry text docs on their servers, looks like they want to store 100% of your data online. Don your tinfoil hats kids, we're going to play the "who do you trust" game... Here's the story thus far: Google posted a PowerPoint presentation with some very juicy notes inside that were only meant for Google eyes (I have been waiting SO long to dust that one off). Greg Linden downloaded it, and spotted some juicy tidbits. By the time others tried, the PPT had been redacted. And now the PPT is a PDF, without those awesome notes. So what was in them? From what we know, there were three items of interest:

1. Google wants to store all your data on their servers so you can access it anywhere. Probably going to be called GDrive, as mentioned in the PPT.
   
2. Google is going to continue to innovate in search. Again, in the notes there are several ways they are going to improve.
   
3. Google discusses a project calle "Lighthouse" which no one can figure out what it is...

Haven't 1 and 2 been obvious for a while now? I mean, clearly things like GMail and Google Desktop were made to manage networked storage for data. Google seems obsessed with storage, literally giving it away. So obviously they want to bypass the OS war, going straight for thin-client, thick-server delivery of services (and as their notes pointed out, that is their strength). And it's a no-brainer to say they've got to stay on their toes with search. I mean, that's their bread and butter. And then there's this Lighthouse thing that no one can figure out. Although it appears to be an access list (says so in the notes), we can't seem to figure if it's a standalone product, or just something in the background, hiding the nasty details from us all.

Either way, it's clear Google is feeling the heat from products like Microsoft's Office Live and other fronts. Although MS has had to pull back a little from their "we're going to kill Google" remarks. There's more talk about these slides here and here, and the link to the PDF is right here. It's also clear the next great battle is over your data. Now who do you trust?

[Via ZDNet]