Can Google Give Free Disk Space to the Entire Planet?
This post continues from my previous post Mad Media All the World’s Innovations are Belong to Google.
Can Google give gree disk space, mail storage, and whatever else to the "Entire Planet"? Ask yourself another question– "Can Google host a free party for the entire planet?" and the answer will be obvious.
Why is GMail still in Beta
Why is it that GMail is still in Beta? One reason is that it is operationally expensive to let the product out of Beta and provide that much of free hard disk space to everyone. Just a few viruses can become a security nightmare to GMail.
So I keep wondering if Google Disk (GDisk) and GMail and all such "free" services for the entire planet were made "open to all users" – whether Google (GOOG) could operationally handle the traffic and also bear the expenses for the same?
It is all too easy to say that you can give disk space (dubbed GDisk) to the entire world to store data and hence personalize the serach results. However, in reality running a data center to offer such a service to the entire world can work to be extremely expensive and probably unfeasible right away.
I wonder what folks at Google or some people in media actually mean when they either make such claims or discuss them in crazy detail without asking fundamental questions about financial viability of such ideas (along with the viability on other important dimensions). Do read the reader comments to the Computer world blog. Most people consider the idea crazy.
Here is quote from Greg Linden’s In a world with Infinite storage, bandwidth, and CPU Power that discusses Google’s Feb 06, Analyst Day claims to build Infinite Storage:
Tags: 196, 69slide 19 (in the notes) talks about how their work is inspired by the idea of "a world with infinite storage, bandwidth, and CPU power." They say that "the experience should really be instantaneous". They say that they should be able to "house all user files, including: emails, web history, pictures, bookmarks, etc and make it accessible from anywhere (any device, any platform, etc)" which leads to a world where "the online copy of your data will become your Golden Copy and your local-machine copy serves more like a cache".
4 opinions for Can Google Give Free Disk Space to the Entire Planet?
TheBizofCoding
Jun 19, 2006 at 7:20 am
Hitwise has published rankings on May 19th that show Yahoo! (YHOO) leading Google (GOOG) and MSN on all of the following Web Properties except Search in the US: Email News & Media Business & Finance Travel & Maps Here is the…
Abhinav Modi
Jun 24, 2006 at 8:34 pm
Gmail may be in Beta, but that is probably just a marketing decision - everyone who WANTS a gmail account now has one. Declaring it as “Production” would add costs to google for better support processes, which could be one reason for this continuation in Beta for around 2 years. It also created a LOT of frenzy, with gmail accounts being sold on Ebay and sites like gmailswap acting as a flea-market for bartering gmail ids.
As for infinite storage, it is a long way to go before people will actually rely on such a service due to various concerns - security and reliability being foremost. From a cost perspective, this is probably why the “googleplex” model is being followed and such datacenters being created.
ujwal tickoo
Jun 26, 2006 at 7:29 am
Abhinav,
Am surprised to know about eBay based bartering of gmail accounts. Sounds strange.
I agree with you on infinite storage. Privacy issues will have to be covered well before main stream user adoption. The cost issues remain.
Ujwal
MC
May 1, 2007 at 8:20 am
There is nothing worse than a spammer ruining valid comments, such as the one above. Please do not click the links spammed above by Robert.
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