Changes to Google's Cloud Storage Pricing

[Colin Southern]

For the last year or two I've been paying Google USD $4.99 a month for 100GB of storage - so it was somewhat of a surprise when I got an eMail from them to announce that my current plan was being retired in favour of a new plan offering the same amount of storage for USD $1.99 a month.

Interestingly though, they also have other plans, and I ultimately opted for 1TB for USD $9.99 a month.

Just thought some folks might like to know.

Do date I've used their Google Drive extensively and it's been virtually flawless - syncing things like spreadsheets and other documents perfectly between various devices. Happy to answer any questions anyone might have.

[Mike Buckley]

Does Google Drive offer free storage? If not, is there any particular advantage of Google Drive over the free services such as Dropbox that do offer a limited amount of free storage? I ask because I've never looked into them other than that I started using Dropbox when a business associate told me about it.

[Colin Southern]

Does Google Drive offer free storage? If not, is there any particular advantage of Google Drive over the free services such as Dropbox that do offer a limited amount of free storage? I ask because I've never looked into them other than that I started using Dropbox when a business associate told me about it.

15GB for free that's also shared with Google Mail. I don't use dropbox - I think parts are similar to Google Drive, but there are different parts as well. I've always thought of dropbox as being a file sync & distribution service, whereas Google drive does that, but also integrates with Google Mail (eg the ability to attach files up to 2GB to eMails that are stored in Google Drive, save attachments received in Google Mail direct to Google Drive without having to download them, "office" type documents (equivalents to word / excel etc etc) (that don't use any of your space allocation) that you can keep open on multiple devices, including with shared users so multiple people can edit the same document or one usercan have the same document open from multiple locations (edits at one location are instandly pushed through to the other locations).

[Mike Buckley]

Thanks, Colin! Those capabilities would be very good to have for people who can make use of them. I'll keep them in mind if I ever have any of those needs.

[RustBeltRaw]

Google's update was definitely a pleasant surprise. I've been investigating Backblaze storage for some time. They're a smaller company with a clever, open-source model, offering unlimited storage for $5/month.

[Colin Southern]

Google's update was definitely a pleasant surprise. I've been investigating Backblaze storage for some time. They're a smaller company with a clever, open-source model, offering unlimited storage for $5/month.

I'm always curious as to how they manage "unlimited storage" for everyone; as far as I know, even Google with it's massive storage capability (basically multiple copies of the entire world wide web, in multiple versions) still only store to conventional hard drives. Still, not our problem I guess!

I had a quick look at their site - I did find one part a bit misleading though; the bit where they talk about companies charging $3000 to attempt a recovery. That's pretty much what drivesavers charge, but when I've used them they've given me a quote - I've accepted - they've looked at the drive - recovered the data - and then asked for payment before giving access to the data. I had the option of not paying if they didn't recover enough (they got 100% back in this case).