Google plans to make PCs history

guardian.co.uk ^ | Sunday 25 January 2 | David Smith

[indthkr]

"but with search engines all a competitor has to do is make a better search engine and people can instantly and costlessly switch."

LOL!

Easier said than done I can assure you.

[Colonial Warrior]

Old Rahm's Inaug Day Flagrant "in your face" signal heralds the arrival of the EROSION of our rights!!

[Arguendo]

Certainly. But if no one can produce a superior product, what business does the government have interfering with Google’s search business? What would consumers possibly gain?

[Gordon Greene]

Has anyone connected all of this to the digital television changeover?

I don’t understand much about the technology, but a physical antenna is all you need to broadcast an analog signal while you have to have the internet at some point to broadcast a digital signal... therefore all you would need to shut down or control communications is to shut down or control the internet.

Same thing here... if all the data is in one central place then it would be much easier to control or stem the flow of communication at any given time. It goes way beyond wanting to know what’s on our PC’s.

Conspiracy, anyone?

[Gordon Greene]

The pace is rapid and the refrain deafening.

I guess I thought they would move a bit slower. My stupid fault. Any foolish conservatives out there still want to give them a chance?

A chance to what! Destroy America for good???

[roadcat]

Last week I saw a 1 Terabyte external drive for $178.

Incredible prices! This week a 1TB Seagate internal drive is going for $99 at Best Buy.

I've been on Apple's me.com for the last couple years, where I can access my personal files anywhere on the go. Don't use it much, as I can take my MacBook with me along with lightweight external drives.

[Wonder Warthog]

"The amount of data stored on shared servers, and the proportion of data overall stored there, behind various network applications, continues to climb inexorably."

So, what are the numbers? An increase of from .01% to 0.1% is a lot different from an increase of, say, 10% to 20%.

I suspect the situation more nearly resembles the first case than the second.

[MrPiper]

I keep personal data on my computer. What would you suggest I do with it instead, and why is keeping it on my computer dumb?

I have a fire resistant file cabinet to keep all taxes,business data, hard copies of all online business, etc. I have no worry about this articles type of cyber crime.

I keep one computer turned off and hardwired to internet for the times I need to do online banking which is seldom. No passwords or any personal data is stored on any computer and each has a firewall. I'm not worried about this articles type of cyber crime. Dumb may have been a little harsh. I apologize.

[Wonder Warthog]

"For my personal computer (and my 8 GByte USB travel drive) I use the free TrueCrypt program for confidential data. I also use the free LogMeIn.com service to remotely access my computer from any other computer connected to the Internet. Both work great. I’m not seeing what Google expects to bring to the table which isn’t already there."

Best point on the thread. If you already have an internet connection (which you MUST have, in order to use "Google Drive"), then you can already access your files, with greater security, at any time, from anywhere. I currently use LogMeIn to access my work PC from home when I'm "down for maintenance", and it's great.