Speculation is sparked once again by drive.google.com URL

Sep 1, 2011 13:10 GMT  ·  By

There have been rumors about GDrive, a cloud storage service from Google, for half a decade now. Not unsubstantiated rumors, mind you, Google was working on storage in the cloud several years ago.

The project got shelved though and, while Google Docs can be used as backup storage of sorts it's not ideal for this.

Fret not, GDrive, which has seen several deaths and resurrections is now back, once more, from the dead.

At this point, it's mostly speculation, but some signs point to Google doing something with drive.google.com.

The URL is not live yet, mentioned in a Chromium patch report. Another mention of the possible service was made in yet another patch.

On the one hand, it may be that it's just a trivial URL that Google uses internally for its own purposes, or some minor feature or update that it plans to launch publicly, but not the mythical GDrive.

But the fact that that's the only place you'll see it mentioned, could also be because Google is staying very secretive about this.

Again, Google Docs already accepts any kind if file, albeit you only get 1 GB of free storage. But you have to use the site and the process is cumbersome. It works for moving several files from one computer to the other, but it's not a cloud drive.

On the other hand, something akin to Dropbox would be a lot more useful. What's more, it would be great for Chromebook users, who don't get any local storage of any kind. If they want their files to be accessible at any time, they need to use some sort of cloud storage.

An automated, multi-platform system, for desktops, Chrombooks, Android phones and tablets, could prove rather enticing. But, again, all of this is speculation since we only have a non-working URL to go on. [via TechCrunch]