Google’s online storage service will enter a competitive field of similar offerings from Microsoft, whenever it enters the field, that is.
Those who remember when tech information arrived in thick, ad-stuffed trade journals probably recall the Microsoft model of announcing a not-yet-launched product to stifle discussion of services from rival companies. In that time, such stories worked to give Microsoft time to either compete or buy the competitor.
Web services and wider broadband Internet availability have knocked that strategy into the history books. But it’s difficult not to see a parallel between Microsoft’s vaporware articles of the 1990’s and the latest discussion of Google’s online storage service, GDrive, in the Wall Street Journal.
Google has work under way on the project, according to the usual unnamed sources. No launch date. No pricing plans. No storage capacity. No confirmation from Google, per the requisite no comment from the company.
The article presents considerations like competing services, and the potential for legal entanglements for storing information with a remote provider. Legitimate concerns, certainly, but ones that miss the real big-picture issue: upload speeds.
We have tested out three of the services noted in the Journal’s piece, and found the uploading process slow thanks to the parsimonious upload speeds Internet service providers allow for their customers. If “high-speed downloads” frustrate people, uploading will be a true test of character.
Online storage from Google will have its uses. The really useful feature, fast uploads, is something even Google’s brightest engineers won’t be able to address, whenever GDrive launches.
