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Google is building a new feature that provides consumers and enterprises with an unlimited amount of online storage for their data, according to various sources.
The projects details were part of a slide presentation that appeared briefly online during Googles analyst day meeting March 3. But the slides disappeared soon after buzz began in the blogosphere.
A Google representative confirmed March 6 that the Mountain View, Calif., firm did remove some of the presentation slides because they “were not intended for publication.” But the spokesperson would not disclose anything further.
According to a blog posting of notes from these slides, Google is at work on a total of three projects, named Gdrive, GDS and Lighthouse. Each project is based on the goal of bringing about “infinite storage” and “infinite bandwidth,” according to versions of the pulled presentation slides now posted online.
Googles Gmail e-mail service could be considered the precursor to these projects. Gmail account holders have up to 1M of free space, which for many is an amount theyll never use.
Gdrive has been described as a kind of unlimited storage account, according to various Google watchers who claim knowledge of the project. But little information could be found about GDS or Lighthouse.
Googles Firefox browser team is also at work on the network end of things, according to the slides.
Tactically speaking, the initiative “suits our strength vis-à-vis Microsoft and is also of great value to the user,” Google wrote in the slides.
Thats a rather thinly veiled reference to how Google thinks the feature will resonate with enterprises, which is a Microsoft stronghold that Google has been attacking with its own business-focused features.
If Google does indeed add these new features, its also likely to force the hand of its major competitors Yahoo and America Online in addition to Microsoft. Each of these so-called Web portals already offers to store data online, but not an unlimited amount.