Google’s focus on the enterprise side of cloud has been strong in recent months – but it has by no means neglected the consumer arena either with a new storage plan and price cuts to match.
The company has announced the launch of Google One, a premium tier cloud storage offering aimed at replacing paid consumer Google Drive plans. The new service includes options ranging to 30TB, alongside access to Google experts for customer service, and added perks, such as credits on Google Play, or select hotels found on Google search.
Pricing starts at $1.99 per month for 100 GB and $2.99 for 200 GB, with prices above 2TB remaining the same as before. Yet the big change is around the 2TB mark, which now costs $9.99 per month – the price of 1TB previously.
In other words, Google is giving everyone an extra terabyte out of the goodness of its heart, halving the price of its 2TB plan in the process. The company confirmed it will upgrade existing 1TB Drive plans at no extra cost. In comparison, Dropbox and Microsoft offer 1TB at $9.99 – but the latter also bundles it in with Office 365.
“Thanks to mobile phones, and new file formats like 4K video and high-res photography, people are storing more than ever before,” wrote Pavni Diwanji, VP of Google One in a blog post confirming the news. “That’s why we’re introducing Google One, a simple plan for expanded storage that includes extra benefits to help you get more out of Google.”
This publication has covered in chapter and verse Google’s recent cloudy plays. Earlier this week, the company announced its intent to acquire Velostrata, an Israel-based company which focuses on accelerating enterprise cloud migrations. The storage wars continue, but more in the background these days. In February, Microsoft unveiled plans to poach rival customers by offering free OneDrive for Business so long as companies weren’t already Redmond houses in some capacity. The offer runs out at the end of June.
Google One has received favourable reviews, however. Writing for Forbes, Kevin Murnane argued that the live help aspect of the service “could turn out to be the most useful element of the new service.”
You can find out more about Google One here.