According to the Wall Street Journal this morning Google's preparing a service that would let users store on its computers essentially all of the files they might keep on their personal-computer hard drives - such as word-processing documents, digital music, video clips and images. Or, as CBS News says it, "Google Wants To Be Your Hard Drive."

Here is how the Journal summarizes the imminent development:

"Google is hoping to distinguish itself from existing online storage services partly by simplifying the process for transferring and opening files. Along with a Web-based interface, Google is trying to let users upload and access files directly from their PC desktops and have the file storage behave for consumers more like another hard drive that is handy at all times, say the people familiar with the matter."

Continuing to quote "one of the people familiar with the matter," the Journal claims that Google is hoping the new storage service will help tie together some of its other services through a single search box.

"So a user might be able to conduct a single search by keywords to find his own privately stored files, regardless of whether they're accessed through Picasa, Docs or a software program running on the user's computer," writes the Journal's reporters Kevin J. Delaney and Vauhini Vara.