Gdrive

A new URL on the drive.google.com subdomain is another sign that Google’s rumored GDrive cloud storage is coming soon. Available at beta.drive.google.com, it redirects to the Google Accounts login website. Upon providing my credentials, the page was stuck in an endless redirect loop. Something clearly is cooking in Google’s kitchen, though the product is not ready for prime time. Google Drive, or GDrive, leaked many times in past months, revealing its logo and interface. Judging by Google Docs code hooks, GDrive is likely to become at least an integral part of Google’s cloud-based productivity suite if not a full-blown cloud storage service shared across all Google services.

While it is already possible to buy more storage from Google, it is shared only across Gmail, Google Docs, and Picasa Web Albums. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month that Google would launch Google Drive “in the coming weeks or months.” The idea of a unified Google storage for consumers’ dates back to 2007, and later leaks suggested the product is anything but vaporware. With Microsoft’s SkyDrive cloud storage service now being revamped, GDrive is likely around the corner.

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If you believe the rumors, Google’s been working on a cloud-based drive for your computer since 2005. Code-named “Platypus” and also known as GDrive, it was supposed to arrive long ago, as I wrote over at TG Daily in January 2009. Today’s article by TechCrunch asserts that the search company may be close to launching Gdrive, based on code hooks discovered in Chrome that point to the drive.google.com URL:

Diving a bit deeper into the code reviews, what’s most striking is that drive.google.com doesn’t appear to be referenced anywhere besides this one exposed ticket. This suggests that it’s either no big deal, or that Google is keeping this very secret.

TechCrunch also reminds us of Steven Levy’s book “In The Plex” which describes how Google+ lead Bradley Horowitz “convinced Google’s top executives not to launch” Gdrive back in 2008 because he felt “the concept of a ‘file’ was outdated”.

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