It’s cloud storage day at Google, as the company announced its Drive product, providing 5 gigabytes of room for users. Also today, the Gmail team made it known that all users of the email system are going to receive a 33% boost in their space, from 7.5 to 10 gigabytes.
I just checked: I was 87% full at the 7.5 mark, so the extra few gigabytes are going to come in handy. From the company’s announcement:
Today, we’re happy to announce that we’re increasing everyone’s free storage in Gmail from 7.5 GB to 10 GB (and counting) to celebrate today’s launch of Google Drive. The increase will take effect over the next 24 hours. We hope you all enjoy the little bump!
Make sure to check over the next few hours for your little gift. After upgrading my Docs account to Drive, I suppose that I have 15 cloud gigabytes from Google at the moment, for free. That’s pretty damn cool. The marginal cost of cloud storage is racing towards zero, it would seem, if Google can give away so much, to so many.
Just by way of comparison, any new SkyDrive user, Microsoft’s cloud storage product, can snag 7 free gigabytes. That in mind, I have access to 22 gigs of storage in the sky, that I don’t have to pay for. I wonder if people are ever going to fork over much money to pay for more space, when there are so many competing, high-capacity options from each major player.
Box, SkyDrive, Drive, along with the fact that every webmail service is essentially a storage solution (email yourself a file, and it keeps it), and I almost wonder if we are in a glut.
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