Sunday, August 19, 2007

Rumor: Was the Gdrive Release Canceled?

Just in case you missed the latest rumors revolving around the YouTube video “Googley Blues”: The video, apparently created and sung by a Google employee, was showing the Gdrive aka Platypus icon overlaid with the lyrics, “I’ve been ready to launch my product since 2002 ... At least round here 5 years ain’t so long overdue.” Someone claiming to be an ex-Googler – I can’t verify this – now adds in the comments, “Platypus was intended for public release as much as [a] year ago, but then there was the push away from creating new products.” It’s true that in 2006, an internal Google company goal read “Count total number of Google products and reduce by 20%.”

Also at one time, hidden comments accidentally left in a Google PowerPoint were reading (my emphasis), “Store 100% of User Data - 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.” I have Gdrive on this machine, but it’s just a leak of Google’s internal Gdrive product, used to connect to Google storage from everywhere (if you have the password). I don’t know if any of this truly indicates that Gdrive was ever meant for public release, but at least some signs are pointing in the direction. By now, what Google did release was their shared storage program.

The Googley Blues video in the meantime has been made private.

[Thanks everyone!]

Rumor: Was the Gdrive Rel ... by Philipp Lenssen | Comments (13)

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