It will have to "work" in two ways....

work, as in, be a good service – and – "work" as in be as popular as web (or image) search itself.

So then, what will Remote Storage offer?

At the moment, their are so many services out there... all in beta. Even Gmail is STILL in beta. My theory is that they will stay in beta, right up to Remote Storage is launched. Then, each of the services (Gmail, Calendar, Writely, Spreadsheets, Notebook, Web Albums) will be like an icon on the remote storage site, and be completely intergrated to form the online computer. I think Google will eventually have two identities – search and storage – and the latter will be a massive opposition from Windows Live in the Vista years to come... we'll see...

As for publicity and letting the public KNOW about RS, Google's problem is that their company is now a verb: people do not associate Google with accounts, storage, web page creation. When the masses of people want to find these services, they use erm... google! Maybe a way round it would be to introduce keyword-based advertising, to promote it.

I hope you enjoyed reading my non linguistically-evaluation passage of prose.

My thoughts to your post...

- Google doesn't seem to like advertising, they prefer word of mouth. But it's true they send away people really quickly from their site, as in "google" the verb.

- storage is already the backend for Gmail, Blogger, Google Page Creator, Picasa Web Albums, Google Base, etc. While it's not explicit, we all have our GDrive at Google, cross-services. Do they need to make it more explicit? Do people really care? I didn't even check my own hard-drive regularly; I put everything on the desktop, then it goes online, becomes searchable, and the local files on my PC move to the trash or a "temp" folder.

- Is integration of Google services a big issue? Yes, I agree. There does not seem to be a big plan at Google, it's more an evolution of changes. Take Google Spreadsheet and Picasa Web Albums, both services without search at this time (unless I missed something), even though it's obvious it must be in Google's grand plan for these products. So apparently the only grand plan they have is evolutionary software (user feedback-based prototypes)

Just my brainstorming on this!

A nice brainstorm it was too!!

Making an explicit GDrive is vital, in my opinion. It wouldn't be just for organisational sake, it's more for practicality. Why have a seperate web albums service, when you can just upload them to your remote storage and decide which ones to keep private (or..."unlisted" ;-)) or not. Perhaps a bit vague, but one, neat place is better than "betas" "tests" and "invitations" flying all over the place. That was so last year.

Ok me me me.. (raising hand) .. my turn to chip in :)-

Google is now a five trick pony express company :)-
Gmail, Spreadsheet, Calendar, Picasa, maps. Those are the general adopters of technology.

There is the other suite of services too..Finance, Froogle, Video, etc. Its 'suggestion' that the success of non-search products creates "option value" for Google that is not yet factored into the stock price. The other option is subscriptions.For the next few years, therefore, it would seem foolhardy to expect the company to flick a subscription switch and immediately pay for all of its non-search spending.

Having said that, IHMO--it will be user stickness that will attact the uesrland to swtich to paid serivces. This is slowly and steadly going there. Take note of Gmail hosted services. Then the "value innovations" will payoff in terms of share holder prices. Shareholders will also have to live with the risk that, if anything happens to Google's search dominance--or to search advertising itself--the entire company will be screwed.

All strategy is risk and all business have to grow and find new revenue avenues. Google is moving in that direction. Yes, like other companies, Google uses technology. The company does not, however, sell technology

Wait till that happens and then see what happens-- it will be like having your desktop whereeer you go.. All services tied into an nTier Architure model. Growth and expanision is not a problem for google.

And I am not even considering Dark fiber optics , on the wire services that they is still in incubator status!

The reason that posts like this are getting more common is because people are looking for the next mass-value product/improvement from Google.

It's like this: after giving google so much mindshare, the world is now asking for Google to create the product of that mindshare. In other words, Google needs to raise the value of its service, by showing us the results of what they have learned from our attention. (Sorry if that sounds confusing)

No you are correct. What you just said --so well, is the long tail concept in simple english :)

Today's market place is the "Attention economy" . Its the voice of the community which consits of the "long tail".

Reminds me of the google grid from that epic 2015 flash thing

Also, i want a "my stuff" search – Google web search can find anything that its public search constituents can find (you can find products, videos, etc all from web search) I want a counterpart for this for my google account based data

So when will GDrive be available? Got a lot of music and videos to stuff up there.

Videos? like.. ummm porn? :) just kiding..

Hehe – I think it'll be available soon for private testing (but this won't be long). I think once private testing has finished, it'll go straight out of beta.

CL2 wasnt round long; neither will RS2 =)