Google Offers Cheap Online File Storage With a Catch
Friday, August 10th, 2007;
-- Andy Beal |
If you’re a power user of Google’s Gmail or Picasa Web Albums, Google wants to help you with your storage limit woes. As of today, you can buy extra online storage that can be used across email, images and soon, docs and spreadsheets.
Here’s what you can get:
- 6 GB ($20.00 per year)
- 25 GB ($75.00 per year)
- 100 GB ($250.00 per year)
- 250 GB ($500.00 per year)
So, what’s this catch I speak of? Well, you can only use the extra storage for content normally associated with Gmail and Picasa. While you could email yourself video and PowerPoint files, the service doesn’t give you direct access. This is a pain for most of us, but a smart move by Google. They want you to use their services more often, so it makes sense to limit the storage to Google supported files.
What do you think? Is Google being short-sighted by not allowing you to use the online storage anyway you want? I for one would sign up for at least 25GB, if it worked in a similar way to Omnidrive or Mozy.
UPDATE: Microsoft has upgraded their online file storage product. Windows Live Skydrive works more closely to the way I think Google’s storage should work. It’s free, but limited to just 500MB of storage.
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August 10th, 2007 at 8:56 am
If they would let you use the storage for anything you wanted I think they could get a lot of people to sign up. But the way it is now seems like its really only useful to extreme power Picasa users. Who needs 6GB of mail storage?
August 10th, 2007 at 9:46 am
I would be concerned with ownership rights to material sitting on their server for longer periods of time. I’m sure that is the reason they promote you not deleting your emails in Gmail.
August 10th, 2007 at 10:15 am
You have recently posted a job on your website for our open position (Search Engine Marketing Strategist). We are focused on keeping our search very targeted, and would appreciate it if you would remove the post from your site.
Thanks,
Jared
The Brooks Group
P.S. I spent some time on your site… very nice!
August 10th, 2007 at 10:29 am
Thats good to know. And Drew forget about 6GB who the heck needs 250GB, thats alot of email. We’ll see how many people actually sign up for this.
August 10th, 2007 at 10:44 am
So the people paying money, are they going to be able to get actual support if they have issues? I doubt it.
August 10th, 2007 at 11:40 am
[…] posts: Andy Beal’s Marketing Pilgrim, Search Engine Land, Between the Lines, Computerworld, ParisLemon, Insider Chatter, Google […]
August 10th, 2007 at 1:16 pm
The idea is probably to get everyone to buy some storage for their extra images and once used to that spend offer to sell them storage for a different file type at another Google property. Make them all cheap to buy and incrementally take all our money.
I’d much rather see them sell storage that can be used for anything like most.
August 10th, 2007 at 1:44 pm
Nice marketing move but not sure if it is going to generate any hits. I, for one, am not interested in space for which I can’t give out direct access links to others. It may work for small businesses who can host their email system on Google.
August 10th, 2007 at 2:51 pm
Nice Post..Google offers paid storage its a great news for google users
August 10th, 2007 at 3:07 pm
[…] Lame, Lame! (Lame!) August 10th, 2007 at 3:07 pm Google announced that you can now purchase extra storage that can be shared amongst all of your g-utilities, including gmail, Picasa, docs and spreadsheets […]
August 10th, 2007 at 6:00 pm
I don’t see why anyone should pay for Picasa when Flickr offers unlimited storage for $24/year. Maybe Google was too late to purchase Flickr.
August 10th, 2007 at 6:23 pm
I love Gmail. And picasa is great to share some party snapshots with friends but tbh who needs 6gb+ storage for pictures or emails?
August 11th, 2007 at 7:31 am
It’s not surprising to see MS play with MBs. Two years back, when I last time used a MS service online, my hotmail account had a storage of 2 MB and luckily I did not have to pay for it. (The case was I had to use some xyz@hotmail.com account to get Miranda IM working)
August 11th, 2007 at 11:43 am
i love gmail and i dont need any more space then i have now. but if i need i pay for it. because we talk about google.
August 12th, 2007 at 11:40 am
[…] Google Offers Cheap Storage - Andy Beal reports that you can now save your documents and files in Google, but there’s a catch […]
August 13th, 2007 at 1:20 am
[…] Google Offers Cheap Storage - Andy Beal reports that you can now save your documents and files in Google, but there’s a catch […]
August 14th, 2007 at 9:28 am
You can use your gmail account with an “ftp” program. Here’s lifehackers information on the matter:
http://lifehacker.com/software/gmail/store-files-with-gmail-file-space -141833.php
August 14th, 2007 at 9:40 pm
[…] http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2007/08/google-offers-cheap-online-fil e-storage-with-a-catch.html […]
November 13th, 2007 at 1:34 pm
I don’t see why anyone should pay for Picasa when Flickr offers unlimited storage for $24/year
December 12th, 2007 at 6:28 am
So the people paying money, are they going to be able to get actual support if they have issues?
December 12th, 2007 at 6:30 am
The idea is probably to get everyone to buy some storage for their extra images and once used to that spend offer to sell them storage for a different file type at another Google property. Make them all cheap to buy and incrementally take all our money.