Once again there are rumblings concerning Google’s foray into the online storage space – the Wall Street Journal’s Kevin J. Delaney and Vauhini Vara reported that it will be a few months, but it is coming. In addition to the vague time line, the were were a host of other unclear details – pricing is TBD, features are TBD, and positioning within the Google suite of offerings is TBD. Basically, like its namesake the platypus, no one really knows what it is but it sounds cool.
We can’t help but note the stark contrast with ElephantDrive – the online backup and storage service with clear, economical pricing and a well-defined feature set of easy to use tools. Plus, as you may know, it’s very big, it never forgets, and it works for peanuts.
Regardless, the continuing delays in the release of the Google product reflect an important reality: it is really easy to launch a storage product but really hard to launch an excellent, useful, and reliable storage product. We continue to hope that Google will also launch a storage-as-a-service offering a la Amazon’s S3, which would leverage their massive resources and clear expertise in deploying and managing web scale computing and allow other companies to build the software for management and UI.
We’ll have to wait and see…
Other great coverage available at TechCrunch, CNET, and ZDnet.
