Google will finally offer a new online storage service, rumored to be called GDrive, which will unveil itself at the start of April. Says who? Om Malik, that's who. And he's right about these kind of things. Ahem:

According to the details from my sources, Google is going to offer 1 Gb of storage space for free, but will charge for more storage. The market leader Dropbox currently offers 2 Gb for free. Google’s product will come with a local client and the web interface will look much like the Google Docs interface. Interestingly, it will launch for Google Apps customers and will be domain specific as well. Google has also built an API for third party apps with this service so folks can store content from other apps in the Google drive. My sources are impressed, so far with what they have seen.

What will this mean? Well, for us, hopefully it means in increase in GMail storage. We're sick of having to delete emails before the Google forces that be temporarily close down our personal inbox. Anyway, look for it to arrive the first week of April. (As always, take these rumors with a grain of truffle salt; if you recall, GDrive rumors sprouted up in 2006 and 2007 via Wall Street Journal.)

Speaking of Google, the Mountain View-based company gave a well-deserved shout out to German architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, the father of simplistic aesthetics and open-floor plans. It's his 126th birthday today. Delightful.

[Om]