Google Plans Service to Store Users’ Data from the Wall Street Journal reports Google may be offering an online storage service within a few months. We have heard rumors of such offerings in the past, going under code names such as “Platypus,” GDrive, Google Drive and Google “My Stuff.”

Are these renewed rumors legit, or is it just Google offering more storage to applications like Gmail and Picasa, like they have in the past?

The Wall Street Journal claims that this storage service will be “essentially all of the files they might keep on their personal-computer hard drives.” The online storage service will not only allow for storage, but also for sharing files with friends (a P2P network?).

Recently I received a legit image of a Google employee’s desktop that showed an image of the Platypus drive. Here is the image:

Will this Google storage service be similar to a network drive? Will it simply be an extension of a web-based upload solution to Google Apps? How will the pricing structure work?

There are plenty of alternatives when it comes to online storage.

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Related Topics: Google: Apps For Your Domain

About The Author: Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here. For more background information on Barry, see his full bio over here. See more articles by Barry Schwartz