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Google is reportedly set to introduce the internet giant’s own cloud storage service to compete with the likes of Dropbox.
A Wall Street Journal report citing un-named "people familiar with the matter" claimed that the service would be called Drive and that it was set to be released in the coming ‘weeks or months’.
Unsurprisingly the base service will be free, in keeping with Google’s usual advertising-based model, but the Journal’s source also said they’d be options to pay to extend the amount of storage capacity. Google already offers a cloud-based storage for music in the US called Google Music.
Google is also rumoured to be testing some sort of ‘entertainment’ hardware device, aimed at streaming music initially.
The Journal report suggested that Google’s cloud ‘Drive’ service will make it easy for people to share files stored on that service. It doesn’t seem much of a stretch that ultimately the service will be connected with Google’s planned push into own-brand hardware.
Google is apparently testing the music streaming device on employees, something they call dog-fooding, over the US summer. Google has previously advanced ideas such as connecting all sorts of devices in the home such as light bulbs to the internet – something that’s often described as the ‘Internet of Things’.
One might speculate that the ‘entertainment device’, said to be equipped with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, might also act as a sort of home automation hub. Google has been burned somewhat in getting into the hardware market and the home connection market before, such as the Logitech Review and Google Power.
With the tighter focus on connected and more polished services that has arisen under Larry Page’s reign, the search giant might just be of a mind that a Google-branded home hub – gaining a foot in the door with music and video streaming – is worth a shot at extending the internet giant’s reach beyond the computer screen.
