Another googly from Google?

Google has mastered the art of marketing without issuing a single statement

Google, the online giant, appears to have mastered the art of marketing without issuing a single statement. Only the secrecy and magic surrounding Apple products can give it a fight. Take, for instance, the media buzz about the Google phone. The media, including blogs, went into overdrive for almost a year, trying to outdo each other with bits and pieces of the phone — including images. What came of it finally was an open source platform called Android (human machine) around which countless phones can be built — HTC will be among the first to hit the market, any day now. Intel, too, is said to be readying itself for Android-based net-books. Now it is the turn of the Google drive, or GDrive. The news on this has been doing the rounds for the last three years. However, it’s gaining momentum now because of the advances in cloud computing. ‘Cloud’ refers to the ‘internet’ and ‘cloud computing’ to internet-based services. GDrive therefore is being touted as a ‘PC killer’. It could replace your hard disk because you can store all your files — documents, photos, music, etc, on Google servers, and access them from any cyber-cafe or PC or internet-enabled mobile.

The offering is similar to what the erstwhile XDrive (from AOL) offered netizens almost seven years ago, and which has been replaced by offerings like box.net and elephant-drive (but these are paid options). You also have sites like ADrive (adrive.com) which offer 50GB free online storage for registered users and almost 1TB for paid users. Microsoft and Apple already have their own interpretations of desktop-cloud synchronisation, in the form of Windows Live SkyDrive (5GB of free online storage) and MobileMe. But these services, note analysts, mainly supplement computers with locally-installed applications, limiting one’s ability to work on files on computers that are without the appropriate programmes. Google favours online applications, and adding generalised file storage and synchronisation allows a paradigm for computing wherein local applications become irrelevant — at least in theory.

Will online drives catch on in India? First, most Indian users hardly use 25 per cent of their PCs’ 80GB (average) hard drives. And no one would dare store pirated movies online which consume a lot of space. Second, less than 0.5 per cent of the country’s population is online, or just 45.3 million active internet users — defined as those who have used the internet at least once in the last one month. Moreover, almost a decade since the internet made its advent in India, close to 47 per cent of active internet users still don’t know how it can be useful, according to a new I-cube Study, conducted by IMRB and IAMAI. Other barriers to internet usage include the limited spread of cyber-cafes and high dial-up costs for internet access at home. Add to that the slow penetration of broadband in the country. Nevertheless, assuming that internet penetration will eventually improve, the fact that your files can be accessed from anywhere, any time, and from any device — PC, browser or phone — is a potent and appealing idea.

As for GDrive being a reality, Brian Ussery, a blogger and director of SEO technology at Search Discovery Inc, wrote last week that he found information that points to an unveiling soon of the long-talked-about but never seen GDrive. He asserts this is the “first confirmation” of the online storage offering from Google. The online search giant, on its part, says it has nothing to comment so far.