We’ve heard it bandied around all over the place … but what is Google Lighthouse?

Here are a couple of guesses:

Richard McManus opines: “[It's] a next-generation file search solution that ’shines a light’ inside documents on your desktop”.

Squash comments: “With infinite storage, we can house all user files, including: emails, web history, pictures, bookmarks, etc and make it accessible from anywhere (any device, any platform, etc). We already have efforts in this direction in terms of GDrive, GDS, … but all of them face bandwidth and storage constraints today.”

And: “Another important implication of this theme is that storing 100% of a user’s data makes each piece of data more valuable because it can be access across applications. For example: a user’s Orkut profile has more value when it’s accessible from Gmail (as addressbook), Lighthouse (as access list), etc.”

One thing’s for sure, it’s an ambitious project which will truly make the Web the platform. At last.