Google has said before that it wants to organize all of the world’s information. With rumors circulating that it is developing a way for users to store all of their information online, it could be getting closer to that goal. Keep reading for a look at the rumors, and hopefully a perspective check.
As a historian by training, I try to look at things in chronological order. So I’ll start with what happened first chronologically, even though it wasn’t the first point to come to light. In July 2004, a young software engineer named David Braginsky wrote in his blog that he “became a techlead of project Platypus at Google,” among many other things happening in his life. Sadly, his next update wasn't for another year, and only mentioned that he “really wants to focus on work.” There are no entries newer than August 2005 and no hints as to what project Platypus actually is.
In September 2005, Garett Rogers posted some speculation in his blog about a new project of Google’s called GDrive. After revealing that Google owns the gbrowser.com domain, he suggests that it could stand for “file browser.” Then he figures that “if google was smart, they would provide some sort of online storage medium that can be accessed from anywhere… a similar 3rd party application had been developed called ‘GDrive’ which utilized GMail as it's storage. This application has suspiciously been discontinued.” After doing a little digging, Rogers discovered that the gdrive.com domain is owned by the same parties who own the gbrowser.com domain, which leads back to Google. He saw that as convincing evidence that Google is working on a GDrive.
In December 2005, Google bought Writely.com, an online word processor that lets you store your documents securely online. It was by no means the first service that Google made available to its users that allowed them to store content online, nor would it be the last; Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Spreadsheet, Blogger, Google Base, and Picasa, just to name a few, allow users to store and share different kinds of content in a variety of ways. But there’s nothing to tie it all together into one drive, or at least not yet.
Just three months later, Greg Linden checked a slide presentation from a Google Analyst Day and found some interesting notes that reignited the speculation. The note for one of the slides says that Google plans to “get all the worlds information, not just some.” But it’s the notes from slide 19 that are particularly suggestive. They state in part:
“With infinite storage, we can house all user files, including: emails, web history, pictures, bookmarks, etc. and make it accessible from anywhere (any device, any platform, etc)…We already have efforts in this direction in terms of GDrive, GDS, Lighthouse, but all of them face bandwidth and storage constraints today…As we move toward the ‘Store 100%’ reality, the online copy of your data will become your Golden Copy and your local-machine copy serves more like a cache. An important implication of this theme is that we can make your online copy more secure than it would be on your own machine.”
Google quickly took down the notes attached to the slides. Greg Linden posted an update to his blog, stating that “It now appears that many of the notes in the slides were cut-and-pasted from other presentations, never intended for Google Analyst Day.” As it turned out, though, this wouldn’t be the slip that would give the press and the bloggers their biggest field day yet with the mysterious GDrive.
platypus.jpg
What you see here is a screen shot of a mirror of a page that Corsin Camichel stumbled across on July 10. The original page was removed fairly quickly after its discovery. I apologize for the text not being clearer. So what exactly is it? If we take it at face value, it’s “a filer for the whole world. But better.” It also brings together Platypus and Gdrive.
In fact, at first glance it looks very much like we would expect the opening page for a virtual online hard drive from Google to look. It apparently works with Windows, Mac, and Linux systems. And it lists the advantages of storing your files with Platypus rather than on your hard drive. To quote from the page:
- Backup. If you lose your computer, grab a new one and reinstall Platypus. Your files will be on your new machine in minutes.
- Sync. Keep all your machines synchronized, even if they run different operating systems.
- VPN-less access. Not at a Google computer? View your files on the web at cPanel.
- Collaborate. Create shared spaces to which multiple Googlers can write.
- Disconnected access. On the plane? VPM broken? All your files are still accessible.
It sounds great so far…but there are certain clues that this project is not yet intended for prime time.
Linear Mode
