According to several sources including the WSJ and Gartner, Google is reportedly working on a new cloud-based storage platform called Drive which offers similar functionality to current marketplace leaders Dropbox, Box, and Apple`s iCloud.

Google has been a major proponent of cloud computing services and believes that Drive will allow the company to expand and grow this market.

Can Google build a better mousetrap? Google is planning at some point ( rumors say this year ) on offering its current millions of Gmail users an alternative to the established platforms on which they can deposit files and folders to retrieve at a later date.

The market for online storage for both consumers and businesses is expected to grow rapidly as personal digital footprints continue to expand and users of various devices desire ubiquitous access to their important data files from anywhere.

Google Drive will launch in the coming weeks or months, according to a recent WSJ report which repeats an annual rumor that began back in 2007 when it was reported current Google CEO Larry Page was personally leading product development.

The rive, known by the code-names as Gdrive and Platypus, will let consumers and professional users store photos, documents and videos on Google's servers.

Users will be able to access that content from any computer, tablet or smartphone that connects to the Web. The content will likely be rendered shareable as links and possibly offer some integration with the Google+  social network.

Startups Dropbox and Box are now the top providers of Web-based object storage. Dropbox currently has more than 45 million members who saved 1 billion files every few days through October 2011. 

Box finished 2011 with more than 8 million users, has rejected several takeover offers and continues its aggressive expansion plans.

What makes Google Drive`s product introduction particularly important is the fact that it will eventually be integrated with the firm`s Android mobile operating system.

This will enable users to upload files to Google Drive from their home or work PC and then get access to them from their smartphone immediately. This type of integration and synchronize capabilities has many benefits especially with Google's established infrastructure of devices, platforms and software services. Linking together all of these services should be relatively easy for Google as they have proven skilled at such tasks many times in the past.

It is thought that Google Drive will take a tiered approach to usage. Basic users can sign up and store a fixed amount of data in the cloud free of charge, getting access from their handsets and perhaps having to abide by other limitations. A subscription to Google Drive will have far more features, flexibility and storage space to work with, which could make it suitable for businesses and enterprise users.

This can potentially be very disruptive to the Dropbox and Box business models. Google's potential offering to its' tremendous user base with products such as search, Gmail and YouTube, along with its 4 million businesses that use Google Apps cloud collaboration, could make it difficult for other to compete in the same space.

Google's hundreds of thousands of servers in data centers all over the world would provide Google with a scalability advantage Dropbox and Box might have a hard time matching. Ultimately, Google Drive could become the dominant cloud storage in the industry.

Gartner analyst Gene Ruth said both Dropbox and Box.net should be concerned by mounting competition, which includes SugarSync, Live Mesh and others.

Google has every opportunity to provide an excellent and inexpensive Dropbox-like service but it remains to be seen how broad an audience they will target. In particular, will the audience include enterprise-scale customers and support hundreds or thousands of users and thus relieve an IT organization from having to offer file-sharing and collaborations services? We shall see. I expect capability at least on par with Google Apps and expect some actions to mitigate the effects of such an offering on Google's partners.

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