What "Cloud Computing" Could Mean to Consumers

"Cloud" is such a buzz phrase today that it's easy to be overwhelmed by what's really happening on the consumer side. Parks Associates specifies the following requirements for a product or solution to fit in the "personal cloud" category:

• For hardware, appliance, and online solutions, the ability to upload all desired content to remote storage, not just a single-purpose site

• The ability to "push" - or share - only specific folders or files with friends or family

• Remote and ubiquitous access to content from multiple IP-connected devices

• For premium content service cloud offerings, the ability to offer multiple formats or work with hardware with the necessary transcoding capabilities to play content on a wide number of devices

To further complicate this market, there are several different types of consumer cloud solutions...

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Google's ahead in the cloud

There is perhaps no company more entrenched in the cloud than Google.

To prove that point, the search giant has created the first computer operating system that's entirely online, so your computer won't even work without a Web connection.

The operating system -- named Chrome after the company's popular Web browser -- replaces traditional standalone computer applications. Google is hoping to rival the hold of Microsoft's Windows and Apple's Mac more traditional operating systems.

It won't be made public until this summer, but Google has launched a pilot program, putting free netbooks -- an unbranded bare-bones laptop called the Cr-48 -- running the OS into the hands of a few thousand early testers.

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