What Ever Happened To GDrive?

Google Blogscoped points to a Google video created by a Google employee (now private) that shows the Gdrive Platypus icon overlaid with the lyrics, “I’ve been ready to launch my product since 2002 … At least round here 5 years ain’t so long overdue.”

Philipp Lenssen suggests that perhaps Google’s online storage solution might have been canceled, but not surprisingly no one at Mountain View is confirming a thing. It does raise the rather valid question: What ever happened to GDrive?

Our GDrive coverage goes back 18 months with Google including references to “Google Drive,” “a place for users to store 100% of their data online” in a company presentation. In April 2006 there was speculation that Microsoft would launch Live Drive prior to GDrive. In October 2006 there was a confirmed GDrive client being used by Google employees. Ten months later and there is nothing.

What is perhaps stranger in a market sense is Google’s continuing slide from being the market leader in online storage to becoming a potential minnow. Google set the standard with the then unprecedented 2gb storage for online mail with Gmail. Today Google’s 2-3 gb of storage sees it lag behind Microsoft who recently announced 5gb for Hotmail, and Yahoo and AOL who provide unlimited email storage. Microsoft has already launched its online storage solution, although reviews, including ours, were tepid.

So is the GDrive more endangered vulnerable than the Platypus it uses for its logo? If you’re a Google employee and would like to set the record straight on or off the record drop us a line. We’d also like to see that video back up on a non-Google controlled website.

37Signals Drives Another Company To The DeadPool

Ok, the title is a bit ridiculous. But 37Signals has been urging developers for years now to charge for their software, and attacking anyone who suggests a business can be made from giving that software away for free instead. Their model works for their own products, at least so far. But I believe they are responsible for influencing a number of startups to charge for products that were already commoditized by the time they launched. Which is suicide.

Feedlounge, a subscription-based online RSS reader, is the most recent casualty. They launched in 2005 and offered a web based feed RSS feed reader for a monthly subscription fee. There were a number of free competitors at the time, including Bloglines and NewsGator, which had dominant market share. FeedLounge planned to carve a niche for itself by offering speedier and slightly better service.

The reader was good but not great, and came out in the middle of the pack when we reviewed the competition in mid 2006. But the company defended its business model until the end - hear our podcast interview at TalkCrunch with founder Alex King where he defended his business model.

They shut down over two months ago, canceled everyone’s subscriptions, and no one seemed to notice until now. FeedLounge is now in the deadpool, although they may re-emerge as a free service at some point.

If you are in a position to charge for your software and you aren’t that concerned with dominating your category, by all means go for it. But to blindly follow the idea that software must not be free because, damnit, people put a lot of time and effort into it, means you probably shouldn’t be making the business decisions for your company. And if you are entering what is already a commoditized business (online feed readers in this case) that has a price point of zero, you are absolutely crazy to try to charge for that product.

Offering your product for free isn’t always the right choice, either. Often, the right choice is to never have entered the market to begin with. But just because 37Signals tell you you are dumb to go the free route doesn’t mean you have to be a lemming and walk over the cliff.

Romney faces fierce fight for the right

His weekend victory in an Iowa straw poll only highlights the tough competition he faces for the conservative vote. By Michael Finnegan, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer DES MOINES -- Former Massachusetts Gov.
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Breaking: Veoh Sues Universal Music

Perhaps new Veoh CEO Steve Mitgang is the kind of guy you don’t want to try to intimidate. He just called me to say that Universal Music made one too many threats to sue his company. To protect themselves, they are suing Universal Music in federal court and seeking what is known as a declaratory injunction to bar Universal from taking legal action.

Given that the lawsuits tend to flow one way against the video startups, this is a major surprise.

In the press release, Veoh says they acted based on “unreasonable threats” from Universal and filed the lawsuit under the safe harbor provisions of the DMCA. In a phone call a few minutes ago, Mitgang told me that the two companies met recently, and that Universal made it clear that they would be suing Veoh for copyright infringement in the near future. These kinds of threats are not idle - Universal tends to follow up with actual lawsuits.

When a company feels that a lawsuit is imminent, they can strike first to head it off. Since Veoh feels it has protection under the DMCA for its business model, they are striking first.

Mitgang also mentioned to me that Universal Music has never sent them a DMCA take down notice of any kind. He says that they would have complied immediately.

Pickle Purchased For $4.1 Million

Photo and video sharing site Pickle.com has been purchased by Scripps Networks for a reported $4.1 million. Scripps is the company behind many lifestyles brands like DIY, the Food Network, HGTV, and Great American Country. This is their second web purchase after Recipezaar last month. We covered the site’s launch last June.

Pickle is different from a lot of other sharing sites in that it relies heavily on email and mobile phone submissions to personal and shared project pages. It’s essentially a multi-modal service for dumping your content into a bucket of content that you can expose through their widget. The service supports uploads of photos and videos from computers, mobile phones or digital cameras to any Web site. Scripps plans on incorporating the product into supporting content sharing across their existing lifestyle properties. It was created by an Arlington based company called Incando.

You can see an example of their content sharing widget after the jump (auto-plays).
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SAMSUNG - GX-1S This 6.1 mega pixel digital SLR camera comes with a CCD sensor.

SAMSUNG - GX-1S This 6.1 mega pixel digital SLR camera comes with a CCD sensor. It has a 2.5-inch large LCD screen, optical viewfinder and a self-timer. The optical zoom viewfinder saves battery life and helps to focus bettter in dark conditions and bright light. It is one of the lightest and compact digital SLR cameras. The memory of this camera is upgraded with a Secured Digital card. It comes with USB and audio-video interface connectivity. The camera is available in black colour. Price Rs. :- 27,000