Google (GOOG) will offer PC users the chance to store data like word files and videos on its servers instead of individual computer hard drives. It is part of the company’s remote computing system which allows people performing tasks on PCs to run those on the Google servers instead of taking up memory on the computer itself. Google Apps, the company’s spreadsheet and word processing applications already take advantage of the system.
The Google model is aimed at Microsoft (MSFT) Windows which runs its applications using the local computer memory and drives. Google sees no reason to eat up all of that power if its server farms can do the job.
Aside from the normal concerns about storing private data outside the PC, the plan has another flaw. Most computer hard drives can store a lifetime of data and images, so it is not clear why the majority of PC users would even want to store material remotely. There may be the odd geek who has a billion terabytes of information, but that is probably less than 1% of the PC-owning population.
The Google storage plan is a good idea without a logical customer base.
Douglas A. McIntyre
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