When we heard Google was set to launch a cloud-based system called Drive, our pulses began to race at the prospect of its driverless car concept taking to the skies. Alas, that fantasy (also starring Ryan Gosling) will have to stay in our heads for now, as Drive is said to be Google's planned Dropbox-alike cloud storage feature.
The search giant is revving up to launch its own free cloud
system for storing your pictures, videos and files remotely, rather than
on your computer's hard drive, making them accessible to your mobile
devices, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Google signalled the direction it was pointing its motor last year when it unveiled its cloud-only Chromebook operating system -- for use on its fledgling series of Chromebook laptops. While having a bunch of different services aimed at specific storage uses, the search giant has been slow to launch its own take on a
simple, unified cloud storage system for general use, trailing behind the likes
of Apple's iCloud.
Dropbox, which started up in 2007, made approximately $240m in sales last year, attracting 50 million users, and proving clouds really do have a silver lining. The service is free to access for up to 2GB of storage -- for which most people use it -- with a sliding scale of fees kicking in for more space.
Founders Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowski reportedly spurned the advances of Steve Jobs in 2009, who had his 'i' on incorporating the company, before Apple launched iCloud.
True to form, Google is tight-lipped about how much space would be available, any costs, or indeed whether there's any truth in it at all. We'll update this story as soon as we hear anything from them.
Google dropped the ball by entering late into social networking with the underwhelming Google+, but do you think it's boxing clever with Drive? Let us know in the comments or on our Facebook page.