And earlier this week, a new, more specific report emerged that said Google would be unveiling Google Drive in the first week of April. Those reports confirmed that the service looked quite similar to Google Docs, and that it would feature 1GB of free storage space, with users having to pay for anything beyond that. We noted that this was only half of what a service like Dropbox offered users for free.

Now we have another leak, courtesy of Talk Android. This time, it’s a screencap of what appears to be a landing page for the service. The first thing you’ll notice: it says that users are getting 5GB of free space from the start – with the option to upgrade at any time.

There’s a big blue “Download Google Drive” button, which means that previous reports were correct and there will be a desktop app to go along with the cloud service. Here’s what the rest of the fine print says:

All your files – everywhere
Put files in Google Drive and you can access them on your desktop, mobiel phone or tablet, and drive.google.com

Always up to date
Make changes to a file in one place and it automatically updates everywhere

So it looks like it’ll be Google Drive after all (if this is accurate). Talk Android says the it’s on track for release the week of April 16th, a little later that the report from this week said.

He says that “sources familiar with the company’s plans” have marked the first week of April as the release period. Google Drive (or possibly GDrive) has been rumored for over half a decade, but has yet to materialize while services like Dropbox and Apple’s iCloud have flourished. A Google cloud storage service wouldn’t be anything revolutionary, it’s just surprising to many that it hasn’t happened yet.

The most recent big rumor of GDrive came courtesy of the Wall Street Journal. They said that Google would “soon” be launching the Drive service in order to compete with the aforementioned services, and that it would work like you would expect: users upload files to it and are then able to grab them from any internet-enabled device.

In February, Google Drive was reportedly spotted in the wild. One Google users snapped a screenshot of what they said was the Drive service, having noticed that there was a “Drive” button suddenly present in their Google black bar. We commented that if legit, it sure looked a lot like the current version of Google Docs. Malik’s sources confirm that “the web interface will look much like the Google Docs interface.” They say that GDrive will also come with a local client.

How much storage is on the way, you might ask? Apparently only 1 Gb for free, which is a little less than other established cloud storage services. Any more that that, you’re going to have to pay for it say the sources. It also might be launching with a third-party API already built, meaning that other apps could use GDrive to store data.

What do you think? Are you excited about the possibility of cloud storage from Google? Do you think it’s necessary with all the other options? Let us know in the comments.

According to those who spotted it, it appeared when they tried to insert files and images into Google Sites and Blogger. A screenshot is now making the rounds, showing that it is tied to Picasa, Maps, Google Docs, and YouTube. 

A spokesperson for the company told TechCrunch, "Oops… looks like someone pushed some code too quickly. It’s not quite ready for prime time yet but stay tuned!"

Something like this might come in handy when you want to share things. Incidentally, Google is also working on something else that’s not quite ready for prime time (and isn’t expected to be until the Spring – you know, that "social layer" Google is supposed to be adding to tie its products together. 

Any suggestion that this is related could only be considered speculation, but it’s something to consider. Another thing to consider is that Google is heavily trying to move people to the cloud. Google made an announcement recently that also connects the better part of Google’s services together through Google Apps. 

Something else that is also apparently not quite ready for prime time? Google’s Cloud-based operating system Chrome OS. This very likely has a lot to do with that. In the end all of these things are going to be connected in one way or another, I believe. 

Sarah Perez at ReadWriteWeb drops a name we haven’t heard in a while. "Wait, a Google storage product? Isn’t that Gdrive?" she writes. "Gdrive, the long-rumored Google competitor to Microsoft’s now 3+ years-old SkyDrive cloud storage service has never officially been revealed. But it was supposedly going to do something similar – tie together Google services into one interface."

"Isn’t that what Cloud Picker is doing?" she adds. "Actually, no – at least not to the extent of what Gdrive would have done. Cloud Picker only appears as a pop-up when you go to insert media into Blogger or Sites at this time, according to the forum posts…In other words, it’s a dialog box, not a service."

It certainly seems that way. There’s probably already more being made of this than is really necessary. It would appear to just be a function that could be applied to any Google offering the company wishes. If nothing else, it should make it easy to share different types of content in any given Google service. If you’re inserting a file, image, map, document, or YouTube video into something, you’re probably sharing it with somebody. Sounds social to me. 

Google is expected to launch a Chrome OS-based netbook on Tuesday.

Here are the facts: Google Docs has received a significant upgrade insofar as users can now upload files of any type.  The cutoff point in terms of individual files’ sizes is a generous 250 MB, and each user gets a total of 1 GB of storage.  All for free, which could save a lot of students and professionals from having to buy thumbdrives.

The trouble is that this solution isn’t extremely economical if anyone needs more space.  Google intends to offer additional storage at the rate of $0.25 per GB per year, which isn’t going to strike fear into the hearts of hard drive manufacturers.

Indeed, since rumors about the GDrive tended not to associate it with caps and prices at all – and since, with Chrome OS on the way, it had started to seem more likely that Google would offer some sort of cloud storage solution to everyone – hard drive manufacturers may be breathing sighs of relief.

Anyway, the new storage feature will be rolled out "over the next few weeks," according to a post on the Official Google Docs Blog.

Related Articles:

> Report: Google To Snap Up DocVerse

> Google Adds Relevance Option To Docs Search

> Google Exec: Docs Can Supplant Office In One Year

In addition, users can upload photos directly to Picasa Web Albums from within Google Sites, using the "upload photo" tab in the insert dialog. It should be noted, however, that Google Apps users will not see the options, because Picasa Web Albums is not available in Google Apps.

Google has also made it easier for friends and family to follow updates from Google Sites. Announcement pages can be accessed as a feed by adding posts.xml to the end of the announcement page’s URL.

"Feeds are also available for site comments (add "comments.xml") and site activity (add "activity.xml")," says Google Sites Senior Product Manager Scott Johnson. "Announcement and comment feeds follow the permission of the site and require authentication for private sites. This means online feed readers which don’t support authenticated feeds won’t be able to subscribe to private site feeds or site activity."

Google has also added the ability to create custom page templates for a site. This lets users define default content and settings such as layout. Other collaborators can then use the templates when they create a new page.

Frederic Lardinois with ReadWriteWeb makes an interesting connection in that the insert dialog on Google Sites could be what the long-rumored "GDrive" might look like. "This mythical GDrive would give users the ability to easily store and access all of their files in the cloud," says Lardinois. "Lots of other services already offer this, of course, but few of them are at the center of our online lives as much as Google is."

There’s no sense in jumping to any conclusions, but it’s an interesting observation nonetheless.

Brian Ussery went digging into a file in the Google Pack bundle of software and found a mention of GDrive under the heading "Online file backup and storage."  The block of text then continues, "GDrive provides reliable storage for all of your files, including photos, music and documents," and "GDrive allows you to access your files from anywhere, anytime, and from any device -  be it from your desktop, web browser or cellular phone."

 

This appears to confirm long-circulating rumors about both the purpose and abilities of GDrive.  What’s more, there wouldn’t be much point in having all of the flowery language stuff finalized if GDrive is only limping along in some basement lab.

So is GDrive ready for release?  Well, who knows.  But since another section of the same file describes GDrive as part of Google Pack and thanks the reader for downloading and installing it, it again looks like we’re getting close.  Anyone on the cusp of buying a new hard drive or other storage device might want to just hold off for another few weeks.

Hat tip goes to Alex Chitu.

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.

follow me on Twitter

Google, IBM Create University “Cloud”

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Carnegie-Mellon University, the University of Maryland, Stanford University, the University of Washington, and the University of California at Berkeley – these are the six schools.  They’re also, in case you didn’t guess, where those “best young minds” can be found.

As for the hundreds of computers – they’ll essentially come from Google’s and IBM’s pockets.  The International Herald Tribune reports that the two companies have agreed to spend $30 million over the next two years, and Google itself stated that they intend to gather around 1,600 processors.

The aim of the whole initiative, then, is to “address the challenges of internet-scale applications in the future.”  Or, in less lofty terms, to teach people about cloud computing.

It’s impossible to guess what will occur as a result of this development – some very smart people are being given unprecedented access to a huge amount of computational power.  It’s hard not to think of Gdrive, though, and wonder if this is a precursor to its release.

Philipp writes:

Just in case you missed the latest rumors revolving around the YouTube video “Googley Blues”: The video, apparently created and sung by a Google employee, was showing the Gdrive aka Platypus icon overlaid with the lyrics, “I’ve been ready to launch my product since 2002 … At least round here 5 years ain’t so long overdue.” Someone claiming to be an ex-Googler – I can’t verify this – now adds in the comments, “Platypus was intended for public release as much as [a] year ago, but then there was the push away from creating new products."

It wasn’t too long ago that a PowerPoint presentation leaked that mentioned GDrive and used the phrase "Store 100% of User Data," referring to a goal of offering access to everything a user could want from any platform or device.

That PowerPoint presentation met is no longer available either.

Actually, Live Drive is more properly called Windows Live Folders, but it’s nonetheless entered beta testing.  This “will provide customers with 500 megabytes of online storage at no charge,” according to a statement from Chris Jones, Corporate Vice President of the Windows Live Experience Program Management.

And, yeah, I know 500 megs isn’t much – especially compared to what some of Microsoft’s competitors have made available (see this AP article for details) – but Jones says, “We see this limited managed beta in the United States right now as just a starting point for us, and we’ll begin collecting input from beta users during the testing process, which will be useful when developing future versions of the service.”

No other details about this particular service were forthcoming, but Microsoft took the opportunity to announce a few other things, including the introduction into beta of Windows Live Photo Gallery.  This will be “a new version of the photo application found on Microsoft’s two most recent operating systems, Windows XP and Windows Vista,” explains Reuters.  “It simplifies how people can share photos on their Windows Live Spaces site, Microsoft’s social networking platform.”

So, Gdrive isn’t here yet, and Live Drive isn’t all that impressive, but we’re getting there, folks.  If Jones and Microsoft are to be believed about “refining, adding and connecting products,” then we’re getting there.