Google hawks online storage for money

Stan Beer
Sunday, 12 August 2007 15:59

In what appears to be another step in Google's unrelenting march to lure users off the desktop into the online space, the search market leader has launched a paid storage plan for Gmail and Picasa Web Albums users.

The new paid storage service, announced last week by Ryan Aquino, Software QA Engineer Lead, Picasa Web Albums, does not come cheap. In addition to the free 2.82GB provided to all Gmail users, Google will provide a further 6GB for US$20 a year, 25GB for US$75 a year, 100GB for US$250 a year and 250GB for US$500 a year.

Google plans to extend the new service to other applications such as Google Docs & Speadsheets where paid storage may present a viable revenue alternative to advertising.

The new paid storage service may also present an attractive choice for users with diskless portable devices who are satisfied with Google's range of online office productivity tools.