The world is slowly shifting towards being a Google-dominated society…well, at least on the Internet, that is. News broke today by the Wall Street Journal hinted that the search engine giant is very close to launching a cloud-storage service that many think will rival Silicon Valley’s best startup (as named by TechCrunch, VentureBeat, and GigaOm during the 2011 Crunchies) Dropbox. Being called “Drive”, it’s Google’s attempt to catch up to all the innovation being done in the cloud-storage space by younger and leaner companies. But is it actually Google’s loss for rolling something out so late in the game? It only seems logical for Google to have this cloud-storage product rolled out today now that they have most of the other pieces in play already. But we’ll get into that in a bit…but for now, let’s look at what the Wall Street Journal says about Drive:

Drive will most likely mimic all the features that one currently gets out of Dropbox or any of the other cloud-storage services. It’ll allow you to store photos, documents and videos on Google’s servers so that they will be accessible from any web-enabled device (tablet, laptop, desktop, and mobile). According to the WSJ, “if a person wants to email a video shot from a smartphone, for instance, he can upload it to the Web through the Drive mobile app and email people a link to the video rather than a bulky file.” The service is set to launch within the next few weeks or months and, like all the other competitors in this crowded field, will offer a freemium model where most people will get a free account, but if you need more space and additional features, then you can pay for a premium account. Just how much space is allotted for the free version remains in question, but with the average space limitations from Dropbox, Oxygen Cloud, Box, and others being about 5GB (Dropbox is actually 2GB), it probably won’t shock me if Google tries to one-up it and give up to 10GB in storage. That’s all a guess since Google will want to give people enough of a carrot to try their service, fall in love, and convert to a paid account. We shall see…

But how will Drive ever catch up to what many consider to be the industry leader, Dropbox? Well probably by offering free accounts to all of their Gmail accounts (350 million users)–that will easily gain it more users than Dropbox (45 million users). Sure, Google would gain instant fame, but the hard part is to entice the users to keep using the service. And that might be Google’s greatest challenge, but it isn’t too far-fetched of an thing to solve. Already, Google has its grips in us with email and millions of us are also addicted to using Google Docs as well  and now with 25 million active Google+ accounts all tied to your Gmail account, it seems that the search engine is going to want to be managing your Internet experience. And I hate to mention it as well, but imagine the additional revenue stream that Google will get by serving ads within their cloud-storage interface? They could easily create some algorithm that not only currently scans your email, Google+ activity, documents, and search history, but with Drive, they can offer contextual ads based on what music, videos, and files you have stored in the Cloud. Scary, but the potential is there.

GigaOm is saying that “Drive would be yet another in an array of new consumer services from Google which added Google+ web conferencing and collaboration in June…Google Music which stores users’ audio collections…adding consumer cloud storage service is another way for Google to leverage its prodigious infrastructure.” And they’re right. Google has slowly got themselves in order and realized that they need to start releasing all the pieces to the public and eventually it’ll all form together, like Voltron, to create an immersive Internet experience that allows the user to do everything that they want, while allowing Google to strengthen its offering while also enhancing their search engine and advertising monster capabilities.

I suppose now we take the “wait and see” approach. When they’ll launch it remains to be seen, but hopefully there’s a big enough selling point that separates it from Dropbox or it’s just going to be another cloud-storage service and we’ll wonder why it was even hyped up to begin with.

We all know that the right, easy to remember (and easy to type) domain name can be integral for marketing. One of my favorite tools for file/document storing and sharing is Dropbox. However, you could only access the Dropbox site through GetDropbox.com. You have no idea how many times I just typed Dropbox.com and got a 404 error.

TechCrunch is reporting, happily, that Dropbox now owns and operates Dropbox.com. So when you want your files from a PC that’s not your own, you now have an easy domain name to remember. Congrats Dropbox!

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Cheers!
Tweet Michelle @writetechnology, send her technology news at michelle[at]writetech[dot]net, visit her wine blog when you’re thirsty, and drop by her day job.

I’ve spent the last week MIA. Earlier in the week, I installed Snow Leopard on my Macbook Pro. The install went smoothly. Then I tried to accomplish things.

A real snow leopard would have done less damage. Microsoft Office products would open but were unable to save or print or print to PDF without crashing. I had the same experience with Adobe Acrobat 7 and Photoshop Elements 6. To add insult to injury, iCal and Mail were acting funky, with repeated crashes. I was unable to do anything I need to accomplish on a daily basis. I made sure I had the latest and greatest updates of all the software, but that didn’t fix the problems.

Luckily, I’d backed up all of my personal files before I started the upgrade. But I hadn’t backed up my entire machine, including all those tiny extensions, plug-ins, and shareware apps that add tweaks to different programs and the overall operating system. However, I bit the bullet. I performed a clean install of Snow Leopard, wiping out everything. A clean install means that I then had to re-install all the programs on my machine, from the iLife suite to the Adobe and Microsoft suites. Again, I made sure to download the latest and greatest of everything.

At this point, I’d invested almost 2 days in trying to upgrade my system. Imagine my surprise when I was having the exact same problems as before. I was unable to save or print and my iCal and Mail were crashing repeatedly. I investigated my issues on the Web, but these didn’t seem to be common problems. Seeing as how I needed my email, appointments, and applications in order to run my business, I had no choice. I downgraded. In order to return to Leopard (10.5), I had to do a clean install, again wiping out everything.

Day 3 found me re-installing and updating everything for the second time. Everything worked – almost. Mail didn’t function – it wouldn’t even open. I tried everything I could think of, but ended up making an appointment at the Apple Store. Unfortunately, the appointment was a day or two away.  In the meantime, I had learned a lesson – for the second time. I obviously have a hard head. About a year ago, I had a backup drive give out, and I hadn’t backed up my backup, so to speak. At that point, I gave serious consideration to storing everything in the clouds, but I never followed through. This time around, I’m all about the cloud.

I was already halfway there. My photos are already on Flickr, so I didn’t lose those. My mail is completely IMAP and/or Gmail, which means I didn’t lose too much of it. Using Gmail has gotten me into the habit of not really filing things – I just tag things and sort them into Smart Folders in Mail, but they remain on the server. I did manage to lose a couple of things, but overall I ended up okay.

Since Mail.app wasn’t working, I was able to access my mail through various webmail applications. I seriously considered moving everything into two Gmail accounts forever, and not needing to use Mail.app ever again. Unfortunately, I’m not willing to part with my IMAP accounts and move to POP. In order to use only Gmail and/or Google Apps for Your Domain for all of my email addresss (six of them), I would have to change them all over to POP. So Gmail for everything was out. Alternatively I tried Mozilla Thunderbird, which I disliked, and Entourage. Entourage had some nice qualities, but like Outlook, it doesn’t handle IMAP very well. I was stuck.

As for my iCal, I was already in the cloud. When I made the decision many months ago to switch away from an iPhone, I knew I’d need to sync my calendar and contacts somehow – and it might not be Mac-friendly, so I bought Spanning Sync and started syncing everything with Google. So my calendars were synced not only with my Google account, but with Mobile Me. The only change I made was to install Google Gears so that now I can access my calendar if I’m ever offline.

For To Do/Tasks, I finally broke down and started using Remember the Milk. I know, everyone has been using RTM for ages. I’m behind the curve. Using Gears, I can access it when I’m offline, and I installed the widget to the right of my Google Calendar as well.

I downloaded DropBox and I’m going to use all 2 GB, I think, and I may upgrade to a paid version (50 GB for $10/month). I’ll store all of my client contracts, latest and greatest client updates, and so on out there. I can access it from anywhere and I feel better with my most important files in the cloud instead of just sitting on a backup drive. I’ve already been bitten by that.

My bookmarks and passwords were lost. In a way, this was probably a good thing. I’m now going to be a lot more secure. I downloaded KeePass, an open-source password manager that will store my most important passwords, including passwords to things on my computer (as opposed to just things online). The database file for KeePass is stored in my DropBox. Additionally, I started using Xmarks. Xmarks syncs my Firefox bookmarks across computers. Additionally, it syncs my Web passwords and brought in my Delicious bookmarks as well. However, it does seem to blow up if it tries to sync with Safari, but only if Safari is already syncing with Mobile Me.

So that’s how I’m moving into my own little cloud. I still have a few issues to work out. Logging into bub.blicio.us, for example, only seems to happen if I use Safari and not Firefox. The Apple Store Geniuses played around with my Mac yesterday and rescued Mail.app for me. It was using a Snow Leopard preference file in regular Leopard. So much for a clean install. But overall, I’m finally back in one piece – and cloudlike.

Photo credits: Snow Leopard via CC

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Cheers!
Tweet Michelle @writetechnology, send her technology news atmichelle[at]writetech[dot]net, visit her wine blog when you’re thirsty, and drop by her day job.