Search engine king Google is allegedly planning an online storage service. A Wall Street Journal article reports that the Mountain View, Calif.-based company is to offer users the option to store on its servers essentially all of the files they might keep on their personal-computer hard drives, including word-processing documents, digital music, video clips and images.

WSJ sources claim that a basic level of service, with a lower storage allotment, will be available for free, while premium subscriptions will also be provided for more demanding people.

The project was apparently at one point known internally at Google as "My Stuff". It's unclear what its name will be when launched, if that ever happens. The new Google service, if operational, could add to the challenges facing Microsoft's core Windows operating system and Office productivity software businesses by speeding a shift toward Web-based computing.

There were indeed earlier rumors of a "GDrive". "I've been able to get hold of Google's internal Gdrive client, named 'Platypus' (information on the project leaked a while ago [in mid-2006]). Please note that Gdrive, from what it looks like, is not a product for general release, but a way for Google employees to store and share files," Google watcher Philipp Lenssen wrote on his blog in mid-October.

Just a couple of days ago, market research company comScore’s October charts showed that Google unsurprisingly was the top search engine of the month, with 58.5 percent of the United States’ search market.

Adding to the fact that Google retained its leading position atop rivals Yahoo, Microsoft and other search engines, it also won up to 1.5 percent over September. Around 6.1 billion of all 10.5 billion Internet search queries that Americans conducted in October were done by Google.