Google's Rumored GDrive May 'Kill' the PC

Monday , January 26, 2009

Google's rumored "GDrive," a service that would enable users to access their PCs from any Internet connection, could kill off the desktop computer, Britain's Observer newspaper reports.

The GDrive, unconfirmed by Google and long rumored, may finally launch this year, with some tech news sites calling it the "most anticipated Google product so far."

The Google drive would shift away from Microsoft Window's operating system, in favor of "cloud computing," where storage and processing is done in data centers. Users would no longer have to rely on their computers' powerful hard drives.

Home and businesses have already been turning toward Web-based services, such as e-mail including popular services Hotmail and Gmail and photo storage, such as Flickr and Picasa.

Users would no longer have to worry about their hard drives crashing, since data would be saved on the Web, and can be accessed from any machine.

With the GDrive, a PC would be a device acting as a portal to the Web, enabling users to think of their computer as software rather than hardware.

Google refused to confirm the GDrive, but acknowledged the growing demand for cloud computing.

"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 is how I interact with the web,'" Dave Armstrong, head of product and marketing for Google Enterprise, told the Observer.





Yeah... right. Perhaps when EVERYONE gets decent connection speeds. Also, can you imagine the infrastructure that would be needed for no one to have personal computers anymore? Perhaps they haven't seen the warning signs like THIS: http://broadcastengineeri...cade-1126/

I also wouldn't like someone else having control over MY data. There's a lot of privacy concerns here.

Now is not the time for this.

And I like how they single out PCs. Like this wouldn't affect Mac users.

The security/privacy issue is a BIG one.

I looooove the idea.

But the security/privacy one is big.

CarrieMpls said:

The security/privacy issue is a BIG one.

I HATE the idea.

But the security/privacy one is big.

It'd also kill a gaming industry and have gamers like me resorting to console gaming. Sorry, but some games for the PC just can't be replicated for consoles. Not successfully, anyway.

TMPletz said:

Thanks for sticking up for us Mac-users Todd! It's true, most folks don't even consider us as real computer users.

ZombieKitten said:

TMPletz said:

CarrieMpls said:

Google or other software manufacturer are already inside your PC, and can get any info from you at any time that you are connected. Your information is already not secure.

ArielB said:

right now you have the choice (I can do all my surfing/web interaction from a Ubuntu VM running in VirtualBox). if your 'harddrive' is located in the cloud, not so much.

GDrive is a rumour. I doubt that Google will be succesful in converting 'normal' people to use a cloud (I hate the word) based system for daily computer use instead of their trusty Windows Machine. IaaS for applications? yeah, sure, everybody is already using them without knowing it (think Gmail, Evernote, Twitter,Facebook,Linkedin) SaaS desktop environments ? Not yet and not in home environments.

Security != Privacy ...