Microsoft Goes After GDrive With Live Drive
The rivalry between Microsoft and Google is moving to a new playing field: online storage. According to a report in Fortune Magazine, Microsoft is working on a new Windows Live service code-named "Live Drive". Like Google's Gdrive, Live Drive is a hosted storage service, a virtual hard drive where you could store your data.
Microsoft is planning to use its server farms to offer anyone huge amounts of online storage of digital data. It even has a name for that future service: Live Drive. With Live Drive, all your information - movies, music, tax information, a high-definition videoconference you had with your grandmother, whatever - could be accessible from anywhere, on any device.Google apparently has similar plans. An internal memo accidentally posted online in March spoke of company efforts to "store 100 percent of user data" and mentions an unannounced Net-storage system called GDrive.
Adam Sohn, global public relations director for Microsoft's online business group, confirmed the existence of a Live Drive project but declined to elaborate.
"Windows Live is a set of services build around people. Its major goal is to unify customers worlds so they have access to the people and information they want anytime, anywhere from any device," he wrote in an e-mail. "We are already making major investments in roaming scenarios with our services, as well as search and sharing scenarios across PCs and devices with things like Sharing Folders in Windows Live Messenger and folder sharing and sync with our acquisition of FolderShare. We'll continue to invest in services that enable anywhere, anytime access and Live Drive is the codename for a project in this space. We have no other details to announce at this time."