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Google Drive has just slashed the prices of its cloud data storage to entice more users with rates of $1.99 per month for 100GB, down from the previous rate of $4.99, and $9.99 per month for 1TB, down from the previous rate of $49.99 per month.
The new lower prices were unveiled by Scott Johnston, director of product management for Drive, in a March 13 post on the Google Drive Blog.
“Having launched Google Drive just two years ago, we’re excited that so many people are now using it as their go-to place for keeping all their files,” wrote Johnston. “Whether it’s all the footage of your kids’ baseball games, the novel you’re working on, or even just your grocery list for the week, we all have files that are too important to lose. Today, thanks to a number of recent infrastructure improvements, we’re able to make it more affordable for you to keep everything safe and easy to reach on any device, from anywhere.”
Users who want more storage space can also get it, wrote Johnston, with rates starting at $99.99 for 10TB.
“How big is a terabyte anyway?” he wrote. “Well, that’s enough storage for you to take a selfie twice a day for the next 200 years and still have room left over for… shall we say… less important things.”
Even with the lower rates, Google Drive is still providing 15GB of space to any user for free, as it has previously, wrote Johnston. The storage also continues to allow users to store their data across Drive, Gmail and Google+ Photos.
New users can sign up for a storage plan, while existing account holders will automatically see their accounts moved to a better plan at no additional cost, wrote Johnston. Users can visit the storage purchase page to make changes or review their accounts.
Google is often working to improve its Google Drive storage services for users.
In January, Google added a new “activity stream” to its Google Drive cloud storage service so that users can see whether files have been changed by others since the last time they accessed them.
The activity alerts aim to make it easier for workers who share files with others on Google Drive to learn about the latest changes and updates in their work group files, according to an eWEEK report.
Other useful Drive features were introduced in December 2013, such as simpler file and folder renaming, sharing, organizing and more, through a new drop-down menu at the top of each shared folder.
Google Drive was launched in April 2012 after six years of planning and talks about its intentions to introduce a cloud storage service.
In May 2013, Google announced that it was enabling those with Drive, Gmail and Google+ Photo accounts to put all their files in a unified place, rather than having to maintain separate storage areas, depending on what kinds of files that were being stored. That meant that instead of having separate 10GB and 5GB storage areas for their files, users can now keep their data in one 15GB storage bin for free, simplifying file archiving and storage. The combined storage was made possible because as more Google products have been refined to work together, it made less sense to keep their storage repositories separate.
Also in May 2013, Google updated Drive by giving it a new chat capability, eWEEK reported. Users of Google Drive’s Docs and Slides capabilities can now have chat sessions that are similar to the ones they can use in Gmail.