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Google labs is cooking up another potentially industry-shaking piece of software: the aptly named GDrive promises near-unlimited online storage for your files, accessible via any browser, whether it be from home, office, cell phone, museum kiosk, etc. Considering that the free storage counter on GMail continues to count upwards to no end, I don’t doubt Google’s ability to pull this off - the problem is that ISPs like Comcast that continue to target power users just don’t seem equipped to handle such massive traffic. Imagine if everybody and their mothers had a Rapidshare Premium account and were all constantly using it not just for pictures of funny kitties but also their family videos, episodes of The Office, and -finally- a place to stash all that porn illicit material without the need for silly hidden folders. Chaos!

The actual name of the GDrive is the “Platypus” - the reason given here by Justin Voskuhl, Tech Lead from Google’s official blog:

It’s surprising what natural selection will produce – for instance, a platypus. How could something with such a seemingly discombobulated set of attributes be fit for survival in the hostile natural world? I had a similar reaction when I first heard about the XUL programming language, used to create the Firefox browser and the plethora of extensions that the Internet ecosystem is creating around it. Strange concept, using JavaScript, which is used to write code that works *in* a browser, to create the browser *itself*. As with the platypus, it’s not until we saw XUL in action that we realized how well suited for survival this product of Internet evolution is.

If you ask me, sounds like they just wanted a cool sounding organic name that wasn’t too blatantly Web 2.0 like “Cuil” or “Pipl” or “Mixr” “Gawker“, and www.platypus.com looked cheap enough to buy. At any rate, the concept is simple - an online drive meant for storage and backup, which allows secure access from anywhere with a connection, automatic syncing with your computer, ghosting onto another computer, and sharing with whoever you want. And it’s likely to be all free.



« Voice Controlled Toy Helicopter
Palm: Still alive. And with the upcoming release of the Pre, it looks like it’s still kickin’. »

2 Comments »

Haha, I like his explanation. Cute and clever, and I do like the “plat” for “platform.” Here come the clouds…


Platypus? haha



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