Sweet jesus. That's amazing.

Nice work. I wanna c it on my pc fully working very soon!
http://www.digg.com/software/Google_Gdrive_Client_SOFTWARE_Leaked_Screenshots

Big lol .. look in the configuration file:
LOGIN_FORGOT_PASSWORD_URL:http://shop.store.yahoo.com/wickedcoolstuff/habuyousuths.html

Man, Google should stop jokes some day :)

Crikey! (I don't really know what else to say...!)

waaaaaaaaaaa..this is scoop!!

Oh my god!

nice Philipp :)
i really wanna see it out soon!

Ramibotros
i saw it too.. Google is so goofy! :P

yeah whats with the foo.. with the login_forgot URL redirection ?? it points to ..

http://www.wickedcoolstuff.com/habuyousuths.html

"YOU SUCK and ITS SAID "

These googlers really have a sense of humor!!

Yeah it seems that its only 500 MB :(-

any idea if we combine all the componet storage will it hit 6GB ??

how did you get this? I want it so bad!!!

This was in the sorce code for the Windows help page as a comment:

Other things that may be worth mentioning:
   * Imagine not having to worry where your data is.
   * Conflict resolution.
   * Platypus may spontaneously autoupdate. This will manifest by platypus closing and reopening.
   If you experience new problems, that may be why

Personally, i just think the service will b cool , but don't get the point of backing up everything or somethings online..
it would only matter if they combine services to it..
Like make it easier to gmail the online document to somebody, or edit it with writely, etc...
and while it's at it, mayb it might want to virus-scan it.. :)
But seriously, a nice move would be auto-detecting where each file should go to and send pics+videos to picasaweb, docs to GDocs.

"We encourage you to keep all of your files with us, including your Office documents, photos, and personal notes"

Sounds like Google Docs and Spreadsheets, Picaso, and Google Notebook.

Hmm..Google is already building out the services for G:drive. Actually, G:drive may not ever be formally released, but its functions may be placed as an integration of "Docs, Spreadsheets, Notebook, Gmail, Picaso and so on.

Or : this could be drive space where genuine apps can't be used. E.g a txt config file that is needed or ppt file etc etc.. these services are directly butting heads with the MS-Office suite!!

Whaaaaaaaaaaat ?

Nice, but Sucks that it's only 500 MB.

I mean AOL is offering 5 Gig, Microsoft is offering 2 Gig (for Windows Vista Customers only, I think).

Google should atleast try to match those offerings.

yeah Sohil that sucks

<snip config.txt>

# Drive Size (in bytes) (default 500MB)
SHOWN_DRIVE_SIZE:524288000
# safety area (in bytes) (default 100MB)

I think if they're ever releasing this, it should only have a single file-size limit..

Umm, you guys. This is an *internal* application right now... so 500MB is what Google employees get.

Guys, we have no idea what the size will be when released. At least save the that sucks comments till then :)

yeah, I agree with Or: lets be nice to google for a change :)-

If I add up all the various services.. D&S, Gmail, Gdrive , Picasa etc.. me is getting approx 4.5GB... mulitply that by a user base of 10, that covers at least about 50GB.. thats sweet for a working group..

.....and may we all live in interesting times.. and it my time to go clubing at funky monkey's!! :)_

Nice to hear that...hahahahahah

incredible – and a big THANK YOU to the person who tipped Philipp off!

Peter does D&S have a limit as well ?

This makes me wonder, If Google did this on purpose (to generate interest et all). They must be close to releasing it to the Public. :)

Simply amazing!

Just to repeat, what Google names "Gdrive" is for internal use only, and we don't have any indicators (at least yet) that this specific project is on a release plan for the public...

hey this the coolest web sight ever i sertenly come back later

That's as close as you will ever get to that app. Never even considered for public release. Ever!

Did not Yahoo Corporation have a feature called "Y-Drive" many years ago

How is this different than Novell's iFolder? Looks like Schmidt is just taking another product from his old company...

Just go here and install the 3rd party version.
http://richard.jones.name/google-hacks/gmail-filesystem/gmail-filesystem.html
It gives you 3GB for every Gmail account..

Oops- I posted the Linux version.
Here is the Windows version
http://www.viksoe.dk/code/gmail.htm

>we don't have any indicators (at least yet) that this specific project is on a release plan for the public...

thats what i came to say about..... we dont have any indication of google releasing it for public ......do we ?

hey. isn't the Platypus extinct? ;P

The rampant speculation around this product is high entertainment. I shall add some more.

Let's do some quick math.
1. GDrive is released to public. Initial user base: 1 million (which I think is a conservative estimate).
2. Each user gets: 500MB.
3. Each user uploads at: 40KByte/sec.
4. Each user downloads at: 125KByte/sec

So, to support that user base:
1. Google needs 500 million MB of storage. That's half a petabyte!
2. Assuming everyone uploads at once (not too crazy of an assumption), that's about 40GB (bytes, not bits) / second of bandwith. And that's just incoming.
3. Outgoing traffic will be about three times that much, if everyone downloads at once. That's 120GByte/sec!

If they ever grow to 10 million users, you can multiply those numbers by, well, 10. They'd need 5PB of storage! 1.2TB/sec of bandwith!

All that, for a free product? A copy-right infringement nightware, when everyone stores their MP3s and AVIs on it?

Do you really think that this app (if it actually exists) will ever be released?

This has got to be fake. Not a single Google employee uses a Windows workstation. All Googlers have linux PCs and laptops that connect to a giant google VPN cluster. FreeBSD has far more advanced mirroring/backup and remote home directory tools than this Platypus toy. Even Solaris, Netware and other systems have had the functionality for decades. So why Google would use this little Windows Applet for their employees, when none of their employees use Windows doesn't make any sense

do the same math for what Gmail offers, which has well over a million users...
Google has a massive computer grid across the global. i think this is well within their capability.

re:dpneal

I'll grant that 5PB of storage is probably not that much where Google is concerned; like you said, GMail can do it. Where GMail and "GDrive" would differ is in the bandwith usage. That's why the only numbers that I just can't see happening is the pure bandwith that will be involved with making this application accesible to a 'mere' million users.

Some parts of this post could be considered ilegal and could cause the employee responsible violate NDA and possible other severe consequences.

And it is an internal application which could cause security breach. And posting this on public forum doesn't really made any sense.

I believe it is a judgement error on part of Google Blogscoped.

re: RC

Yeah, whoever leaked this will be in some neck-high doo-doo.

Zimmerman: Unless it was leaked on purpose, of course... ;)

Hi Philip ,
   I have read your E-book on 55- ways to have fun with google
. its really interesting . i learned much more on google than what i had . Cool one my office collegeus are using it to refine their search . Hat's off Philip.GreatWorking on this book

Referring the storage..
how come Google has the tiniest amount of storage?
Google always offered more storage than its competitors..

when Yahoo!'s mail and Hotmail (MSN) offered 10 MB of email storage, Google came up with 1GB of storage..
then Yahoo! and MSN thought of upgrading it to just 250 MB..

now (something about 2 years later) Gmail has an amount of 2.7 GB while the others have 1GB...

its weird that Google offers just 500 MB.. :/

J2K:

Platypus may be just a wrapper/frontend for those technologies (NFS, SSH-FS, etc.) ... network related technologies are not as incompatible in between various operating systems as standard programs.

OMG a company has an internal file-storage mechanism. A lot of companies use Windows front-ends to things like VPN and NFS. I love google, but I don't care if it's employees can store files or not.

Guys, 500MB is just the DEFAULT storage. I'm sure Googlers can request as much as they need.

I think "or" has it right when he posted this: G:drive may not ever be formally released, but its functions may be placed as an integration of "Docs, Spreadsheets, Notebook, Gmail, Picaso and so on.

Here is what will happen: Google Docs, Spreadsheets etc will store files on Gdrive. But Google will also release hooks for products like OpenOffice.org to save/load these files.

So when you are on the road, you will work online using Docs & Spreadsheets ("Google Office"), and when you are at your own workstation you will work with the same documents using OpenOffice.

I can't wait!

http://cocaman.ch/_platypus/

hmm... very interesting – especially the sync'ing aspect.

anyone got a photo of the platypus t-shirt?

privacy and security reasons can hold it away from general releases.
I will use it but imagine Google storing a congressman files. :)

GG Philipp!
You and your informer are the best ;)

Looks like this isn't the only place that has GDrive- not so "internal" now, I suppose?

<<Not a single Google employee uses a Windows workstation.>>
Counterexample: http://www.google.com/help/maps/tour/ Look at the "Search" button and scrollbar... And by the way, there's a Linux version of Platyus.
<<I will use it but imagine Google storing a congressman files. :)>>
I don't think Google has a deal with ABC... ;)

i think it would be good if google offers let's say 3gb of storage per account and then user can decide where he'll use it.
And AMD live allready has a function simmilar to this.. and it seems the can "handle" it :)

Looks like they're trying to duplicate what WebDrive already does.

Actually most Googlers use Windows for their computers, only few use Mac or Linux.

A Google employee once said “[T]he vast majority of computers at Google are Linux boxes. They give us a laptop also, and we get to choose between a Mac Powerbook and an IBM Thinkpad. ... Overall there’s a strong undercurrent of ’give the coders the tools they want and get the hell out of the way’.” Then again, he might've been referring to stuff like servers, or mostly have a developer perspective...
http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2006-06-15-n22.html

I think you're right:
http://sacha.free.net.ph/notebook/wiki/2005.10.06.php#anchor-4

but I remember somebody from Google said they use Windows a lot and most of my Google visitors use Windows (XP).

this is amazing! I'm glad this is still in great progress. but I sure hope that 500mb is just a default setting which can be changed by the user (as it stands for now at least)

I think picasaweb should have increased storage as well! I was so disappointed that google for the first time was making people pay for additional storage!

As for hints to this going public-- don't we all remember the accidentally leaked analyst day powerpoint? I have it saved on my computer :D

Theme number 2 of slide 38 reads: "Store 100% of User Data
With infinite storage, we can house all user files, including: emails, web history, pictures, bookmarks, etc and make it accessible from anywhere (any device, any platform, etc).
We already have efforts in this direction in terms of GDrive, GDS, Lighthouse, but all of them face bandwidth and storage constraints today. For example: Firefox team is working on server side stored state but they want to store only URLs rather than complete web pages for storage reasons. This theme will help us make the client less important (thin client, thick server model) which suits our strength vis-a-vis Microsoft and is also of great value to the user.
As we move toward the "Store 100%" reality, the online copy of your data will become your Golden Copy and your local-machine copy serves more like a cache. An important implication of this theme is that we can make your online copy more secure than it would be on your own machine.
Another important implication of this theme is that storing 100% of a user's data makes each piece of data more valuable because it can be access across applications. For example: a user's Orkut profile has more value when it's accessible from Gmail (as addressbook), Lighthouse (as access list), etc."

So they mention GDrive and Lighthouse as two services for the public, which just haven't been released yet. Don't you think all their products are tested internally before releasing them publicly? That's all they're doing with platypus!

As for not being able to store that much information, looking at gmail raises a huge point. They already offer tons of storage in all of their services-- gmail, blogger, video, picasaweb, etc-- they all store tons of data! Either way, new storage technologies and technological advancements will make this stuff simple, look at holographic data storage for example. We will have 1.2 petabyte hard drive discs in around 3 years thank's to colossal storage! http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/02/17/0051234 the disks will also be super fast too. Then this technology offers even MORE storage-- check it out! http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/05/10/144209

1 petabyte = 1,024 terabytes
1 terabyte = 1,024 gigabytes
1 gigabyte = 1,024 megabytes

just so everyone knows what a petabyte it.
after petabytes come extabytes, zettabytes, then yottabytes

Sohil
<<does D&S have a limit as well ?>>

You can have as many documents as you want but--
"Each document can be up to 500K, plus up to 2MB per embedded image.

Each spreadsheet can be up to 10,000 rows, or up to 256 columns, or up to 50,000 cells, or up to 20 sheets – whichever limit is reached first.

You can import file sizes up to approximately 1 Mb in .xls or .odf format"
http://docs.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=37603&query=storage&topic=&type=

Google doesn't just want to be the internet, they want the PC to be on the internet!

I think what google does is great, but I don't like the whole world domination thing they've got going so great. Is there some sort of middle path they can take here?

DPic, do you mind emailing me the Powepoint Presentation. I had exams and unfortunately never reached it in time.

DPic I thought Picasa Web Albums was Lighthouse. All the Picasa Web pictures are stored at http://lh*.google.com/ (replace * with a number)
Example: http://lh6.google.com/mrrix32/RSqh7cpiABI/AAAAAAAABEM/GzOslovd0Fk/PICT0063.JPG?imgmax=512
Or are the Web Albums Just STORED on Lighthouse? (e.g. other stuff could be stored there as well)

I think it may by the case that lighthouse is used for multiple google services, the notes on the powerpoint were not very clear and to what it is but I don't think that picasaweb could function as "an access list"

Sohil, a copy of the presentation is available here http://www.box.net/public/g1892g6s98
thanks to a blogger who had saved a copy http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/002797.html

I'd just like to be able to send my iTunes songs up there, 3.40 GB approx. And all my photos. Picasaweb has finite storage status.

"....Australia and Tasmania"

And here was me thinking we ridiculed the poor little island for being part of Australia but just a little bit separated from it!

netdrive + web interface = Gdrive

Is Gdrive that innovative and interesting?

its about as interesting as netdrive + web interface

why is gb inactive.. ? no comments for 6 hours ?

Sankar, there are times when people just have nothing to say you know... :-)

Tony, I thought that happens most of the time...

>netdrive + web interface = Gdrive
>Is Gdrive that innovative and interesting?

NetDrive is actually a stripped down OEM'ed version of WebDrive from South River Technologies.

I wonder if Google looked at WebDrive said, "we can just copy what they did and call it GDrive".

It will be interesting to see why type of search features they can build in to it.

Interesting. This might be helpful for Joe and Jane Consumer out there, but my business is data management and backup for businesses. We just added a full-blown online remote data backup solution using software from remote backup systems remote-backup.com [URL unlinked. -Philipp]. We'll target businesses exclusively – primarily because they have more (and more valuable) data to back up, and the software we are using natively supports open SQL and Exchange backups (and mail-folder-level restores) – and I don't see that functionality coming for free any time soon, not even from the G-monsters.

fw

Hi, this is my opinión (sorry for my English, i'm from Spain)

I think...

1) Platypus as a sync tool, people need to have the same storage size (at least) at home or office, i think this is the first storage limit. If you spend a lot of bandwith with diferents computers (sync), you have to own a lot of space.

2)A tipical user have a lot of files, but a lot of users have a lot of repeated files (music, videos, ppt jokes) (they are the biggest in size terms) the very diferent files are own pictures and own videos and I think, the correct way to manage it would be video.google.com and picasaweb.google.com (limited storage). What about to handle a copy of all the documents on earth? I think google would store a copy of personal documents and the rest (¿posibly 70% on storage size?) would be repeated across users (obtained from email, p2p, shops, software). ¿How many diferents files are in the World? ¿How many money spend people in store and hanlde repeated files in their own HD? ¿How many times are stored the Minesweeper and NEVER used?¿And the wonderfull song LET IT BE?

3)When masive uploads from all users ends, little upload would be needed. And perhaps some technology would be used to analize files on user computers to determine if gdrive has the file already (CRC, file size, file extension, etc) and not bandwith will be used.

4)Google would manage a copy of all the files the users have, and statistics about the use of it. Times opennig, editting, etc. And I think they can use some backup technology to compress files that people don't use. I think share is the way to send a file to a friend without transfers problems (software link vs hard copy) and this could give a fresh experience to the user (very big attachments on email from friends with images, videos).

5)Users can reach their documents from web, and perhaps can search the documents (like web search), and google can insert an ads layer between user and their documents and obtain benefits.

6)Users would be more free to install/unistall Windows because the data are secure.

Thanks for your attention from spain.

dudes – sorry to bum you out, but this looks like a total POS.

it's written in a mish-mash of java, visual basic, dlls and windows batch files?

LOL.

google is great and all – but but holy crap what a joke. either this is fake, or google has officially jumped the shark and started passing kludge for software thanks to david jeske and friends.

I noticed that Google tends to "leak" new product info on Fridays. I think this is just a managed leak to get the buzz out about the product. I've been waiting for this. It'd be great to have my info in the cloud (secured of course).

[Signature removed. -Philipp]