Google plans to make PCs history

Google plans to make PCs history

www.guardian.co.uk

The Google Drive, or "GDrive", could kill off the desktop computer .. Instead a user's personal files and operating system could be stored on Google's own servers and accessed via the internet.

..SNIP...

Google refused to confirm the GDrive, but (...)head of product and marketing for Google Enterprise, said: "There's a clear direction ... away from people thinking, 'This is my PC, this is my hard drive' to 'This is how I interact with information, this this is how I interact with the web".

(visit the link for the full news article)

Also known as "this is how I stop thinking all together"

I have a very basic understanding of Cloud Computing and its 'obvious' benfits to server hosting -- though the the pitfalls of that should be debated here by more versed minds than mine -- but when it is blithely mentioned (on pg. 22 of The Guardian) as "what we are to expect" from the next wave of technology/Google, we can get ready to accept that all of our public and private interactions are going to be controlled by a 3rd party entitiy who is swayed by nothing than their self-interest and the govs/PTB that it behooves them to serve.

I find it astonishing that this tid-bit of news is so arbitrairily fed to the public via the MSM. This is clearly the wave of the future and we are all clearly not meant to catch it... but to be simply boarded on to it.

Is there anyway for this to be stopped? One assumes Microsoft has a vested interest into this not coming to pass, but I don't know what it is esp. as Google got behind Obama throughout -- capping it off with being the second highest donor towards inaugural festivites.




www.guardian.co.uk
(visit the link for the full news article)

[edit on 25-1-2009 by TheWayISeeIt]

Hmmmm no thanks !!! I'd prefer to keep all my documents and personal information stored on my PC not some web based drive that anyone from outside could look into....

So is the way the goverment plans to slowly take away our rights lol

Isn't there already a topic about this?
Anyway I'd hate for it to happen because it would make playing PC games a pain.

For businesses this could be a great thing but for the average PC or Mac user it'll never come to fruition.

Technology is making home computers smaller and smaller and portability is where the money is at, and knowing that people are very attached to their "stuff" Google could never achieve this GDrive on an individual user level.

For business and it's commuting workforce it would be HUGE though...log into any authorized GDrive port anywhere and access your work files...conference, data sharing...could be great.

Could also be incredibly risky as well...but as we've seen from conglomerate businesses like Microsoft for example...getting the cash in hand is often more important than providing a safe, working product.

Overall people would rather have their "stuff" with them or in a tangible location like a desktop PC or Mac...not floating around in the nethernet.

Going against human nature isn't profitable so I wouldn't worry about having anyone try to "free" you from your PC or your "stuff" on that PC

Eventually it will all be reduced so dramatically in size that portability will not be an issue at all.

Agreed with the other poster,id like to keep or clean my own hardrive thankyou very much.I use things such as image hosting,or the occasional larger files i would use adrive or mediafire,but to have my whole system on an accesible computer to anyone is just scary.Google has become power hungry,they already catalogue every search made,this is yet another step in the wrong direction.

I think that this is a horrible idea and will never take off on a personal level. People are not going to willingly store all their personal files on what is essentially somebody else's machine that you have to agree to terms and conditions to use. Not going to happen.

I don't even see this taking off at the business level. Not considering with how cheap hard drives are these days compared to the amount of storage you get. I just don't see this as feasible.

I sure some people will do it because it will be flavor of the week.

Now, for my weird off the wall conspiracy thought of the day.

Could this also be a way for TPTB to start trying to condition us to move away from the latest and greatest technology because technology is now getting to the point to where you can link a few computers together and make a super computer.

As in a few uber geeks with personal super computers could come up with encryption schemes that even take the best super computers decades to break.

In other words do TPTB see the increased technological prowess as a threat to their survival.

That is what I also see this "G-Drive" concept leading too. Not only for spying but also to keep us under their thumb.

No way Jose

I am so sick of these big businesses and governments backing them when it comes to people's privacy.

I think it more than coincidence (rather ominous actually) when only yesterday I saw the news that Barack Obama and His Holiness Pope Benedict have both just launched Google sites that can be accessed daily for updates etc.

It is only a matter of time before our rights are total strangled.

Thanks for the article OP, very interesting.


take care all
res

While I know Google will do everything in their power to make their system secure, nothing is perfectly secure in the end.

And your access to vital information may become rather difficult if your local network node goes down.


I prefer keeping my documents and information on my home PC.
I'll turn to the internet for information I don't have and want to look up.

But my information stays with me.


To add to this, it would make it incredibly easy for a wannabe-fascist government to force Google to hand over all information on people who might take offense to fascism, and stand for freedom.

I would use my PC for my valuable personal stuff but just download my junk to the GDrive.

GDrive , good for junk storage.

Originally posted by TheWayISeeIt

Google plans to make PCs history

www.guardian.co.uk

The Google Drive, or "GDrive", could kill off the desktop computer .. Instead a user's personal files and operating system could be stored on Google's own servers and accessed via the internet.

..SNIP...

Google refused to confirm the GDrive, but (...)head of product and marketing for Google Enterprise, said: "There's a clear direction ... away from people thinking, 'This is my PC, this is my hard drive' to 'This is how I interact with information, this this is how I interact with the web".

(visit the link for the full news article)

this already exists..apple introduced such a system a while ago with the iDisk..a good idea if you work in more than one office...or in an office and then in the evenings at home...but i wouldnt put anything sensitive on such a server...

[edit on 26-1-2009 by alienesque]

Not going to happen. Hasn't been reported on a single enthusiast forum I go on, a similar technology, however, was. That source was garbage, and didn't have any tech jargon. Without tech jargon, articles about computers are pure garbage and are like tabloids. Infact, the paper probably misrepresented what they said, as this source said. Or, do they mean GMAIL DRIVE?

Anyway, how exactly do they propose to stream all the data over the internet? How do they solve latency issues? How do they solve processing issues? If I want to do media encoding, will they do it as fast as my overclocked Quad? Will the sellers of computers enjoy not getting any more money? With a large screen, of 1920x1080, how do they propose sending that data to your screen at 25 times a second, minimum?

A good use of this technology would be remote datacentres where you can store files, so they can be accessed whereever you go, but that already really exists... Gmail drive.... en.wikipedia.org...

Technology is making home computers smaller and smaller and portability is where the money is at, and knowing that people are very attached to their "stuff" Google could never achieve this GDrive on an individual user level.

Actually, in terms of performance, high level computers, the opposite is true. In terms of the size of the chip, and power consumption, it's going dramatically up. Why? Because we have the cooling capacity. If all else is equal, more energy = more performance.

[edit on 26/1/2009 by C0bzz]

While I know Google will do everything in their power to make their system secure, nothing is perfectly secure in the end.

articles.latimes.com...
www.govtech.com...
valleywag.gawker.com...

All this is why i have never used my real name on the internet or even in my own computer.

Even the counter person at my Internet provider never caught that i miss spelled my name when i got internet service. and she looked at my ID and did not see the miss spelling on there form for service.

I would never put business records on a google storage site like this.
that would be like letting the IRS do your business money records and then sending you a tax bill.

Any major company would be giving out insider information to google if they did this.

The possibility of Google having property rights to any file stored on their machine is too great. This means all of the artwork, music, and video that people create will be media that Google will own the rights to, to sell, distribute, or recreate without the original author's permission.

Google would also be a monopoly. Look at the basics of the internet - it's just someone using a computer to access files (view web pages) on another computer (server). If everyone were to use Google's machine to store their information, it would mean that Google literally has the internet on their machine and in their hands.

[edit on Mon Jan 26th 2009 by DJMessiah]

The NSA basically has all of the internet stored somewhere on one of their supercomputers.

Why would I want to give all of my documents to the NSA?

I don't want google to own everything I own either, mind you. I like keeping my things to myself.

[edit on 26-1-2009 by Frankidealist35]

reply to post by TheWayISeeIt


Well, the general rule is, if it's confidential or of value then don't let google have it.

More specifically, if it's confidential or of value, put proper policy based controls on it.

Now this is probably good, for video game files, and general system files and probably non-private media files, or maybe family pictures aren't that big of a deal, but you get my point.

I think it's a while before we let media go from our touch... but then again... maybe not.

Mac already has this as well.

reply to post by TheWayISeeIt


Sucks for 3rd world due to poor internet infrastructure. Also sucks miserably if you are the mobile/survival kind of person, no signal?!

hahahha sure i can see the benfits of it. I can also see the negaties of it for many applications such as 3d gaming, etc, programs needing extra low ping and response times such as the forex market...games....porn... well exclude that last one.

Cloud storage will never replace off-line storage, however it will make accessing trivial data from various locations much easier.

Keeping non-trivial information on your PC is not a wise idea in any case.

The degradation in the security of information on the internet is not does start in cloud storage, it's the transmission to the storage.

Now, in 2009, we know the NSA grabs 100% of all internet traffic. Simply sending information over the internet in any form potentially reveals it to authorities.

Think of all those internet worms that open up ports on your computer for outside access. It is possible that non-trivial information stored on your computer has already been compromised.

If you're keeping anything vital on anything that you cannot readily physically remove from a PC you are kidding yourself as to its security.

Not only is this a creepy idea that sounds like a B-movie about technological world domination, I don't think it's a smart one. Imagine the mess google will have on their hands with this? Sure they may perfect it in a few decades but that's ten to twenty years of working out all the "kinks".