Will Gdrive replace your hard drive?
Some in the the tech community seem to believe that Google is getting ready to launch a service called Gdrive (Google Drive) which aims to replace your hard drive. It will be based upon cloud storage and you store all of your stuff on Google’s servers. Just think about not ever having to maintain backups or worry about being able to access your data in a different location. Plus it would be fairly secure; well, unless you are a bit paranoid about one company having access to all your data and them being corrupt, but that is another matter altogether. You could also sync up your data to whatever computer you happen to be using or simply log in to the Google servers and being able to edit that spreadsheet or document you were working on at another location.
Seems like a pretty neat idea, but how practical is it really? While broadband is fairly available to most people, it still isn’t very fast. So uploading a large file to your cloud storage is going to take a few hours. And with more ISPs implementing caps on broadband it is going to cripple the ability to use cloud storage even further. There are a lot of questions raised including whether or not this is even a true service that Google plans on rolling out. They have been flexing their server might for a while not, but due to the poor economy they have been cutting back services. Is now the right time to roll out seemingly limitless storage for users? Only the coming months or years will tell.
Full Article: TG Daily
No way any of this “air” stuff will replace until we have widespread fiber adoption. Broadband is suitable for surfing and downloads but nothing on the level of constant streaming and actual usage. You can barely find lag-free online gaming — how are you going to trust your entire hard drive to the net?