Everybody with an ear for the news knows that Google has plans for a G:Drive. But if the rumours about Google’s buying Writely are true, then Google is certainly aiming for the moon. Writley is a browser that enables you to write a document and save it online too. If Google’s plans come to fruition, then it will offer you the option of storing the document directly in the G:Drive. Sounds good?
Google’s recently released Analyst Day slide show was a confirmation of their plans to offer a browser for just about everything. Which includes online word processor, excel sheet and document storage among other things. Greg Linden released a snippet from a file that was hosted on Google in a PPT presentation but was soon taken off. For all those who missed there is the consolation of the PDF format without, of course, the meaty parts. But the snippet threw enough light on Google’s mega plans. Google envisages a ” world with infinite storage, bandwidth, and CPU power. The experience should really be instantaneous.” Its a world where ”the online copy of your data will become your Golden Copy and your local-machine copy serves more like a cache.”
The themes that are stressed upon are ‘Infinite Storage,’ ‘Transparent Personalization,’ and ‘Speed.’
With infinite storage, we can house all user files, including: emails, web history, pictures, bookmarks, etc and make it accessible from anywhere (any device, any platform, etc). We already have efforts in this direction in terms of GDrive, GDS, Lighthouse, but all of them face bandwidth and storage constraints today. For example: Firefox team is working on server side stored state but they want to store only URLs rather than complete web pages for storage reasons. This theme will help us make the client less important (thin client, thick server model) which suits our strength vis-a-vis Microsoft and is also of great value to the user……Another important implication of this theme is that storing 100% of a user’s data makes each piece of data more valuable because it can be access across applications. For example: a user’s Orkut profile has more value when it’s accessible from Gmail (as addressbook), Lighthouse.
Now the million dollar question is, ”Is Google really planning to take over Writely, and if yes, would it be successful?” As per now, there are neither confirmations nor denials from either side. But as soon as the wedding bells ring, we will let you know.
