Google Kicks Off Online Storage Price

Google has announced a price cut in Google Drive storage plans, thereby making online storage more affordable. The revised plan lets you store 100GB for $1.99 per month, and 1TB for $9.99 per month. The basic 15GB account remains free, while plans for large storage (10TB+) start at $99.99 per month.

In comparison, the older rates on Google Drive were $4.99 per month for 100GB and $49.99 per month for 1TB. The new plans massively undercut rival players and is likely to set off a price war. DropBox, for instance, offers 100GB for $9.99 per month, 200GB for $19.99 per month, and 500GB for $49.99 per month.

Apple iCloud is priced at $18 per year for a 10GB upgrade over a free 5GB account, $36 per year for a 20GB upgrade, and $90 per year for a 50GB upgrade. Microsoft’s OneDrive, on the other hand, offers 7GB of storage free. Over that a 50GB upgrade costs $25 per year, 100GB $50 per year and 200GB for $100 per year.

                                           

The price war is reminiscent of the email storage space war that started soon after the launch of Gmail. Before Gmail, most webmail service providers like Yahoo and Hotmail used to provide a few megabytes of free storage. Google had introduced Gmail with free 1GB storage.

Last year, Yahoo started offering 1TB of free storage to Flickr users. Users can now sense that online storage is not that expensive a commodity and Google has set the cat among the pigeons. It is only a matter of time before others react.