Google Gdrive: Is the 'PC killer' arriving?

BANGALORE, INDIA: Search giant Google is reportedly all set to make another giant leap in the world computer, with its plan to launch this year the long-rumoured and the most anticipated GDrive storage-in-the-cloud service.

According to industry reports, the company is about to launch 'GDrive', which would allow people to store almost all their data on the Internet and access it from wherever they are.

"Throw your hard drive away, Google's Gdrive is arriving in 2009," said TG Daily, an American technology news website.

According to it, when Google Drive, or Gdrive, arrives, it will likely cause a major paradigm shift in how we use computers and bring Google one step closer to dethroning Windows on your desktop.

The service has the potential to eclipse even Gmail, Google's second best-known product after their google.com search engine, it added.

Gdrive is basically a cloud-based storage that should have two faces: A desktop client that keeps local and online files and folders in two-directional sync via a web interface for accessing your desktop files anywhere and anytime, using any network-enabled computer.

In addition, it will come tightly integrated with other Google services to enable editing of supported document types, like spreadsheets and presentations via Google Docs, email via Gmail, images via Picasa Web Albums, etc, said TG Daily.

The GDrive would enable users to access and update all their information such as emails, photographs, music, documents and spreadsheets from any device with an Internet connection.

This move on Google said to be a part of its 'cloud computing' initiatives, in which the web rather than the hard drive is used as the place where information is stored.

Actually the first rumour about Gdrive was broke way back in 2006 March, when it described about the product in a Google's Analyst Day Power Point presentation.

"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," it said.

However, Google had removed this presentation from its website and was silent about it. Now the rumour has got stronger once again. According to Britain's Observer newspaper, G-Drive has the capacity to kill off the desktop computer.

With the GDrive, a PC would be a device acting as a portal to the Web, enabling users to think of their computer as software rather than hardware, it said.

However, Google is still silent about the GDrive launch was imminent. "We don't comment on speculation, and we don't pre-announce product launches," said a Google spokesperson.

But what do you feel? Can the mysterious drive make the PC redundant?
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