Google Cloud storage

With all this talk about clouds, I decided to delve a little bit deeper into this new buzz word.So what is this "cloud" anyway? I got on my laptop and went straight to the source... Google. I typed in "Google Cloud" and hit the search button on Google. I found many results, 85,900,000 to be exact. Many of the results on the first page were for Google's new Docs and Print programs. While these results all relate to the topic, I wanted to see the homepage for the "cloud", so I kept looking. The website googlecloud.com offers a simple format where searches appear in a tag cloud form, with emphasis on the more popular searches. So naturally, I searched for the term "Google Cloud" here too, That sent me back to the original search results on Google. I came back to the articles on Docs and Print to see if they offered anymore insight. It was in these blog write-ups that I started to get an idea what the "cloud" really meant. Ok, so to be fair it's not just Google who is "in the clouds", so to speak. I discovered Microsoft also has their own cloud based services, Azure and, the appropriately named, Skydrive. Google, along with Microsoft, IBM, Apple, and others, offer storage to back up documents and files online. These files are stored on a virtual hard drive that can be accessed from anywhere, instead of tying you down to a PC or thumbdrive. This makes sense with many of the other trends we have seen from software and hardware developers lately. Everything is becoming more portable and easier to access, whenever and wherever you want. Why shouldn't Google get a piece of the pie? Cloud computing is no doubt one of the hottest trends in technology right now, but with this ease of access also comes a price. Besides just the obvious monetary cost, which ranges depending on provider, the clouds also come with hidden risks. Many privacy advocates have voiced concerns about what companies that offer these clouds are doing with the information on them. Sure, in theory, the clouds sound like a great idea, but are we letting big corporations know too much about us? Aside from that, Google still does not offer encryption on its cloud, with the exception of log-in information. This is a never ending debate, as technology is always evolving and privacy is slowly eroding, as we move further into the future. So basically Google is offering an alternative means of accessing files on the go. Users can store data in "clouds" that they pay for a piece of. While security in the cloud databases still has not quite yet been perfected, even the US government is using similar cloud systems. We don't know what the future holds for Google's cloud, or the many other developing clouds, but if tech crazes like Apple's iPhone hold any clues for us, clouds are poised to take over as the new way to store files and save or print documents away from the home or office. With Google's immense internet presence and the strength of the Google brand, the Google Cloud will likely become one of the top names in the clouds.