Google is the latest of cloud storage providers to announce changes to its service. In the GCPNext Event in London, the company announced the launch of Coldline, a new cold storage service that would store archival data. This storage offers a cheap rate for customers to store data that they’re likely to access less than once a year. The cost for this service is 0.7 cents for every gigabyte of data.

This announcement has come as a surprise because Google’s rates are already one of the lowest in the market. Also, a closely related service called Nearline is already offered by Google for users who access data less than once a month. This service costs only one cent per gigabyte, so a further slash and a new product along the same lines is a surprise.

Besides Coldline, Google made a few other changes to its cloud storage services. Firstly, it has slashed the price of its regular single-region Cloud by 23 percent, which means, it’ll cost only two cents per gigabyte per month starting from November 1st. In addition, calls to its Application Programming Interface (APIs) will cost only half a cent for every thousand operations, and this is a whopping 50 percent cut in price. This rate is applicable for both regional and multi-regional storage, that are also called Class A types of API calls.

If Coldline is one end of the spectrum, Multi-Regional Cloud Storage Service is the other end. This service is available for customers who require incredibly high levels of data availability. To meet the needs of these customers, Google will replicate data across its many cloud data storage centers spread across different regions. This way, latency will be low and customers can access data from any location quickly.

Both these offerings are designed to capture a larger market share in a highly competitive cloud storage industry. It widens their reach to include more types of customers with varying cloud storage needs, within their business circle.

Another interesting change is that Google now allows its customers to move their data from one tier to another at any time, regardless of the bucket in which the data is stored. This is a significant change, and one that corporate customers have been asking for some time now, as it helps them to make the most of economical IT resources without compromising on the needs of the users as well as regulatory stipulations.

These announcements come at a time when Amazon AWS and Microsoft have been making headlines about their cloud business, especially in terms of the new partnerships and offerings they have been able to clinch in the recent past. For Google, these changes represent a significant shift in its cloud business, as it gears up to take on the challenges from AWS and Microsoft. Capturing a larger market share begins with excellent products at affordable rates, and Google is right on target. The next few months is sure to be interesting for Google, and the cloud storage market as a whole.

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