Storage Model: The Google Approach

So Google announced that "within the coming months" they will offer free personal storage - and not just through those nifty little programs that let you soak up that extra GMail space for personal storage either. There will also be a premium storage option as well but pricing has yet to be announced. This means a lot for Google and their stab at Microsoft (who is btw, building data-centers in the U.S. for a very similar service) and allow for people to access their primary files anywhere that there is web access. This type of model is already being seen in its infancy with Google Docs & Spreadsheets that now even includes presentation options where you can link other people to your live feed of your Slides (and I assume soon to include VoIP or webcam options to really enhance the experience). It is also notable that this "G" Disk type storage options closely resemble that of the .Mac service from Apple, with Google's CEO on Apple's board of directors, similarities between the two trendy technology companies is to be expected.
This is a very big paradigm shift in computing back to the old school model of a mainframe and small centers that access them, but instead of being direct networking, it uses "the cloud" aka The Internet. We will hopefully be able to harness the power of local machines that have all the extra horsepower now, in a mash-up of what we create, and where we can access that content. Google hopes to be the center of how we organize and find that kind of information within our lives as it would lead to their search engine (which as of date is delivering roughly 40% of all internet advertising, and the most profitable advertising at that). So if you can think with an open mind about how you and computing can/will relate to each other, then this should be great news for the advancement of computing.