Google Inc is preparing a service that would enable users to store data from their personal hard drives on its computers, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday in its online edition.
Users would be able to house files they would normally store on personal computers -- such as word-processing documents, digital music, video clips and images -- on Google's computers, the Journal said, citing sources familiar with the matter.
According to the Journal, the service could let users access their files through the Internet from different computers and mobile devices when they sign on using a password.
The service could be released as soon as a few months from now, the Journal said, citing a source.
The newspaper also said Google plans to provide some free storage, with additional storage allotments available for a fee.
Planned pricing isn't known, the Journal added.
Google has responded. And it insists on using that silly cloud computing moniker:
"Cloud computing is going mainstream. The apps people use every day, such as email, photo sharing, and word processing, are moving to the web because it's easier to share and access your data from anywhere when it's online, in one place.
Storage is an important component of making web apps fit easily into consumers' and business users' lives. That's why we've always offered a lot of free storage, and it's why we offer paid options for buckets of 'overflow' storage spanning across apps, including Picasa Web Albums and Gmail for now, with more services like Google Docs to come.
We're always listening to our users and looking for ways to update and improve our web applications, including storage options, but we don't have anything new to announce right now."
Of course, we all know that sooner or later, GDrive will arrive.
