Google Drops Prices for Drive Cloud Storage
March 17, 2014
By Matt Paulson, TMCnet Contributing Writer
Google (News - Alert) Drive is a powerful tool for everything from spreadsheets to word processing, but the real advantage that Drive offers is in cloud storage. Users with a Drive account can access their documents from any computer or mobile device, edit them and save the changes for later use, making Drive a perfect tool for sharing documents. Yesterday, Google made Drive an even more useful tool by lowering the prices for all cloud storage options.
Users of Google Drive have always had 15 GB of free storage, and for the average consumer, this is enough to meet their needs. However, users who find that they are pushing the limits of their document storage can uprade to over six times that limit at an affordable price: only $1.99 per month pays for 100 GB of cloud storage.
For users that need to use even bigger storage options, they can upgrade to a full terabyte of information. According to Google, that’s enough space to take a “selfie” every day for 400 years, and still have leftover storage space. Google Drive even supports storage plans that extend past 10 TB starting at $99.99, which is more than enough space to support every facet of a small business or real-time collaboration for larger ones.
Google claims that the reason they were able to lower the prices on Drive’s cloud storage is due to several recent improvements in their data infrastructure, which allow them to store more data more efficiently. Either way, these plans are immediately available to consumers who want access to Google’s cloud storage for work, school and more. Customers who already pay for Google’s enhanced storage services have no need to worry about their bills either, because they are automatically grandfathered into the new lower rate. Since Google Drive shares storage space with Gmail and Google+ Photos, the storage space will also serve triple-duty and makes sure users get the most bang for their buck.
Edited by Cassandra Tucker