Move Over Google GDrive, Here Comes Windows ‘Live Drive’
Besides the launch of Yahoo’s Trip Planner, Monday’s more generalized search engine news was hovering around the sighting of Google’s Platypus GDrive by a blogger who was sniffing around Writely index files. Corsin Camichel’s discovery unearthed what may be some Google testing of a universal information storage, caching, sharing and machine synchronization platform which will bring together our work computers, home PC’s, PDA’s, cell phones and tablets into one mobile operating device.
Now the boys at Microsoft Windows Live & LiveSide are taking the chance to remind the world that Windows Live may have something similar and possibly more practical up their sleeves in the current project dubbed “Live Drive” which is actually a series of Live Storage and data sharing services expected to be launched by Microsoft in the near future:
A bit of clarification on the Windows Live plans, as we know them. The project known as “Live Drive”, while it’s getting a lot of press, will not provide the same types of services as the peek at GDrive seems to imply Google is proposing. Live Drive will offer a “FolderShare” like ability to access files from a remote computer – provided there is an internet connection between computers, and that the computer being accessed is running, as we reported here. Windows Live Search (the desktop one) is planned to be able to search across these remotely accessed files, providing remote access, and search capabilities, but no actual “in the cloud” storage.
That function is to be provided by another project, we’re hearing it called SkyDrive, that will allow some of the 2gig (or more) Windows Live email storage to be used for file storage and access. This is more what GDrive is thought to offer, but it’s not “Live Drive”, at least not at this point. How it will interface with Live Drive remains to be seen, of course.
SDrive, the code name for Windows Live Messenger Sharing Folders, also offers file sharing and file synching between computers, this time from one Messenger user to another. Expect this sharing to be expanded, sharing files within circles of friends, for example.
And yes there’s one more Windows Live file sharing product in the works, this one called Project M. The project, now a part of Windows Live, is planned as a WinFX based graphical front end to file sharing, manipulation, and storage. The first peek at this product has come in the form of MicrosoftMax, the image manipulation proof of concept. Project M seeks to expand that narrow focus, providing a “graphical UI for all of your data from the web, your devices, your file systems, your e-mail stores, etc.”
Like Google GDrive, if it even exists, the Windows Live Data Storage projects are in pre-Beta testing mode and may not even be offered to the public in their current form. Kip Kniskern at LiveSide does however note that It is clear that file sharing, file synching, and file storage in the cloud are getting lots of attention within Microsoft.
