About a week ago, I noted that Google may be on the verge of resurrecting the “GDrive” project, also known as “Google Drive”. The service, which was previously used internally at Google under the codename “Platypus”, was killed off in 2008. But code found in Chromium recently suggested that it may be making a comeback. Specifically, there was a note to add the non-existant (to the public) drive.google.com domain to a secure list in the browser’s code. Today brings another clue.
We’ve just been tipped about some language inside of Google Docs which also points to Google Drive. Apparently, when some users go to delete a document in the recently-updated UI, they’re getting a message that the “items have been removed from your Google Drive”. There you go.
At the time of my initial story last week, Google would only officially say that “The team is always testing out new features, but we don’t have any details to share at this time.” But others I’ve spoken with suggested there is definitely something here.
Google updated Google Docs in early 2010 to make it a bit more like a “Google Drive” by allowing users to upload any file. But the concept has never taken off because it’s clunky. My thinking is that Google is re-working this idea (probably using the exact same backend functionality — hence, the Google Docs message) to be a product more in line with the popular Dropbox or Box.net. And if that’s the case, I also assume that Android and Chrome (and especially Chrome OS) integration are key.
I suspect we’ll be hearing more about this soon.
[thanks Chris]
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