The Last Word: Google Grid

Please note that my blog has changed addresses! It's all new and improved. Hence this old friend of mine had to be left alone. You can visit me at The Last Word (beta). It's all warmed up for you! :)

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This is my first post using Markdown rules, and I really find it interesting how one person's idea can suddenly become a craze with people who start using it. Like SQL, which though not a language in itself, is almost a standard for query languages. I love it how people can just start something, and if its easy, it doesn't take long for it to be accepted as standard. You can find out more about Markdown and its syntax here.

Now, recently, I came across a movie on the now so famous Albino Blacksheep site which shows about Google's plans to make it big in the next 10 years. Sort of like a teaser before the main implementation of a lot of new services. The biggest of them all being the Google Grid, which is sort of an online storage facility for all the data that you might want.

The punchlines are these:

In the Year 2014, The New York times has gone offline, The Fourth Estate's fortunes have waned. What happend to news? And what is EPIC

Google states that:

With infinite storage, we can house all user files, including: emails, web history, pictures, bookmarks, etc and make it accessible from anywhere (any device, any platform, etc). ...

...As we move toward the “Store 100%” reality, the online copy of your data will become your Golden Copy and your local-machine copy serves more like a cache. An important implication of this theme is that we can make your online copy more secure than it would be on your own machine.

This seems just fantastic, and the concept is simply mindblowing. The only thing worrying me at the moment about this is the internet speeds and bandwidth constraints that still exist all around the world. Now the world not being my concern, its Indians (or me to be specific) which (out of the developed-ish nations) might be big losers. We have maximum speeds of about 512Kbps (without limits) and 1GBps (with limits). So I don't see it as practical to constantly try and keep one's online database sync with their local database. That being said, I take nothing away from Google for wanting to make life simpler for people. But one cannot rule out Google's ulterior motives for this move. Not to think about their dwindling stock. But yes, my words are just mere speculations of a cynical mind! :P