Industry insiders are hearing rumors that Google GDrive is coming in 2009. GDrive is a major paradigm shift from Microsoft’s desktop computing where all data is stored on the pc hard drive.

With desktop computing, if a defective hard drive crashes, all the data is lost unless you perform regular data backups either manually or with the use of one of the many data backup programs.

GDrive on the other hand is cloud based computing. Rather then storing data on your personal hard drive, the data is uploaded to a server in the Google server farm. Cloud computing has a number of advantages, the big one being anytime, anywhere access to your data files so long as you have an internet connection.

We’ve already seen people moving away from desktop computing with the introduction of GMail, Google Apps and Picasa. GDrive is just the next step in this evolutionary process. With all of the advantages that cloud computing offers, privacy experts do have valid concerns about a single company having access to all of your personal information. Although Google has indicated that they will adhere to the strictest of privacy guidelines, it will still need to be addressed further to satisfy everyone’s concerns.

It’s hard to say what pricing model Google will use to recover costs of this venture. Online advertising is one option, but perhaps they will offer a free online data backup package for the first 1GB and then pay as you go after that.

[Via]