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]