Google to Offer Virtual Internet Hard Drive

The search engine king is developing an integrated service that would permit users to store and organize their own information on Google’s servers.

Google is set to offer a new hard disk service that will act like an Internet online storage device. Users will access their data, from business letters to family photos, from Google's servers. The data can be accessed or shared from any computer or mobile device.

The as-yet-unnamed service would allow some free storage, with additional storage levels available at different, as-yet-unannounced fee levels. Internally, the discreet service was known at one point as “My Stuff.”

Such an online storage service would join a growing array of vendors, such as IBackup, Xdrive, and eSnips. Many larger companies, such as Yahoo and Microsoft, also offer Web-based storage. Google itself is a veteran of the online storage industry. Its Web-based tools, such as Picasa, Gmail, and Docs, already provide free storage and additional levels of paid storage.

While Google’s current online storage can be shared between Gmail and Picasa accounts, and soon with Docs, the new service would be more integrated, behaving as just another hard drive, with a single sign-on and a single search.

If the search giant did add such an integrated, virtual hard drive to its suite of services, it would increase its growing momentum as a business alternative to Microsoft, with online office apps, collaboration, and now a virtual storage server.