Category Archives: mirror

google: i’ll be your mirror

From notes accidentally published on Google’s website, leaked into the blogosphere (though here from the BBC): plans for the GDrive, a mirror of users’ hard drives.

With infinite storage, we can house all user files, including e-mails, web history, pictures, bookmarks, etc; and make it accessible from anywhere (any device, any platform, etc).

I just got a shiver — a keyhole glimpse of where this is headed. Google’s stock made a shocking dip last week after its Chief Financial Officer warned investors that growth of its search and advertising business would eventually slow down. The sudden panicked thought: how will Google realize its manifest destiny? You know: “organizing the world’s information and making it universally accessible (China notwithstanding) and useful”? How will it continue to feed itself?
Simple: storage.
Google, as it has already begun to do (Gmail, get off my back!), wants to organize our information and make it universally accessible and useful to us. No more worries about backing up data — Google’s got your back. No worries about saving correspondences — Google’s got those. They’ve got your shoebox of photographs, your file cabinet of old college papers, your bank records, your tax returns. All nicely organized and made incredibly useful.
But as we prepare for the upload of our lives, we might pause to ask: exactly how useful do we want to become?