[martin_fierro]

No thanks.

[Slapshot68]

Good idea...too bad my upload speed blows.

[reagan_fanatic]

I’ll keep my stuff on my own hard drive, thank-you very much.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

From Mercury News:

Google plans online storage service

****************************EXCERPT************************

Google plans to offer consumers online storage as part of an attempt to shift personal computing to the Web, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The online storage service essentially frees consumers to view their data wherever they are and makes them less dependent on a single hard drive. It also intensifies Google's competition with Microsoft, since a consumer who stores data on the Web may have less need for Microsoft's desktop software.

The move by the Mountain View company is squarely in competition with rivals who already offer free or fee-based online storage. That includes Box.net, a Palo Alto start-up with 15 employees that offers 1 gigabyte of free storage or 5 gigabytes for $8 a month. Such solutions, where data, services and applications are stored and run from Internet servers, are referred to as "cloud computing" in contrast to desktop computing.

[randog]

Thank god--now I can store all my critical personal data and not worry about a hard drive crash!

</sarcasm>

[Stark_GOP]

Right. Allow Google, a company which has helped the Communist Chinese to persecute Christians, to store my personal files.

[KarlInOhio]

Who will be the first programmer to write an encryption front end to this so that everything Google has can't be viewed, analyzed or turned over to the Chinese government?

[Jeff Chandler]

It would be fine for non-critical data.

My critical data is backed up on three hard drives, two of which are swapped out regularly with one of the two always stored off site in a fireproof safe.

[Billthedrill]

Hmm...it’s a good way to lower the cost of entry-level computing, to be sure. But anyone who doesn’t keep private copies of private data is a fool.

[stuartcr]

This sort of thing was tried by others a few years back, didn’t fly then either.

[polymuser]

.
All your information are belonging to us.

[ShadowAce]

[KoRn]

Nice! Though I’m not so sure I would store anything on there I didn’t want want anyone else to see.

[webschooner]

sign me up ... when pigs fly

[HeartlandOfAmerica]

“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)," it said.

Ummmm ... what's the word I'm thinking of???

Oh. NO!

If data is on my drive or my thumb drive or my flash drive, I decide when it stays and when it goes. I own the data and the backup copies.

Putting things on an external service like this means that the whole world can access it from hackers to court orders, all the data and all the backups for as far as they reach.

Not for me.

[Cringing Negativism Network]

Google is usually pretty smart when it moves.

I don’t see how they’re on the right side of market forces, with this one.

Won’t be long, you’ll be able to back up your system onto a thumb drive you bought at Fry’s for 5 bucks.

Why would anyone want to back up to the internet, with the price and efficiency of storage free-falling?

[tutstar]

gnip...