Leave Google Behind

Since LGB's inception, this site has contained sarcastic references to the eventual arrival of "GDrive", an online storage "service" for users where data of all filetypes can be stored. Those references are unfortunately no longer a joke:

Google is making files more universally accessible through Google Docs, letting Google Apps users upload to Docs all file types up to 250MB, including large graphic files, .zip folders, RAW photos or personal videos shot with a smartphone. Essentially, Docs is now a universal storage repository. This proposition is not unlike the long-rumored GDrive, which since 2006 was believed to be as mythical as a unicorn until evidence of it was discovered in a Google Pack file in January 2009. Google denies that this Docs move is a move toward the GDrive.

Yeah, and not so long ago, Google was denying that it had any interest in creating its own browser. Even more recently, Google denied that it had any intention of making its own phone. And prior to all of that, Google denied that it had any plans to sell low-cost PCs running its own software, engineered with Google malware. It took a few years for the plans to materialize, but they did.

Google's product denials are just as worthless as the Monster of Mountain View's supposed commitment to the privacy and security of its users. The expansion of Google Docs is just the beginning of GDrive.

How can we tell? Because Google's appetite for user data is only getting bigger. Not everyone will buy a Google Chrome netbook with all of its contents automatically uploaded to Google datacenters, so a GDrive offering for users of other operating systems is a certainty.

So... how long before people start to realize that Google really is the modern day equivalent of George Orwell's 1984 nightmare?