According to Sundar Pichai, Google’s Senior Vice President of Chrome & Apps, the offline version of Google Drive will be coming in “five weeks”. The Google executive dropped the bomb at the closing session of D10 in California today. Unfortunately, he didn’t delved more into the announcement. Pichai also discussed its Chrome browser’s market share which he claims to cover a third of the world’s desktop browser usage up to date. Pichai also touched on the difference between Android and Chrome OS. When asked why both platforms exist, Sundar replied:
Android is extremely successful, we couldn’t be more proud of it. We have exciting steps ahead with tablets, too. There are many instances where people spend all of their time in the browser. The notion that, for the first time, your experience is in the cloud. You still run on a local device — CPU, SSD, etc. — but the notion that your computer is actually in the cloud enables zero administration. From a web console, you can deploy and manage apps — there’s no installing software, etc. I think what is important between Android and Chrome OS — with users, it makes sense. Look at Apple, there’s MacBooks and iPhone, they use different operating systems. Convergence will happen, sure. But look at Gmail — you go from a Chromebook to Android, and it just works.
With Google I/O just around the corner, it’s a bit tempting to think that the Google will flash a demo of offline Google Drive during the said event this coming June 27 to 29 at Moscone Center, San Francisco. But just to be safe, let’s not make any assumptions okay? Rest assured that we’ll give you an update if something new comes up. So, assuming that you’ve tried using Google Drive, will an offline version of Google’s file storage and sync service appeal to you?
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