Online backups could use Google’s expertise - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

It’s all well and good that Google has promised a speedy, secure operating system designed for a Webby world. But why can’t the company — which buys so many darned hard drives — tackle a smaller project first and give consumers something they really want and need: easy-to-use, cheap data backup?

A so-called GDrive has been rumored for years. According to the speculation, this would be a service that lets people manage all of their files online – not just e-mail, photos and documents – and gives people access to their data from any computer with a network pulse...