Google Services Gives You More Storage, If You Want To Pay For It
Google has finally unveiled a system under which you can pay them for more storage in Gmail, Picasa Web Albums, and eventually, a bunch of other Google services. For now, if your 2.82 gigabytes of Gmail space and 1 gigabyte of Picasa space aren’t enough, you can pay $20 a year to get an additional 6 gigabytes of space. Previously, $25 a year got you six gigs of Picasa space, so this is not just a discount, but space that can be used accross both Picasa and Gmail accounts.
If you need more space, pay for it. $75 a year gets you 25 gigabytes, $250 a year for 100 gigabytes, and $500 a year for 250 gigabytes. While paying for stuff is never fun, it’s better than running out of space and having to delete emails or photos. When Google expands this to Google Docs and other services, it’ll be even more valuable.
To compare with the competition, Microsoft’s Windows Live Hotmail offers 2 five gigs for free, 4 10 gigs for $20 a year. They also have SkyDrive for storage in the cloud, with 500 megabytes of free storage for sharing files or private file storage, something Google doesn’t offer anywhere. Yahoo has unlimited email inboxes, which is probably the way things should be by now everywhere, and 100 megabytes per month for Flickr, unlimited if you pay $25 a year. Flickr has one of the most unique free/premium feature differences, hiding all but your most recent 200 photos, not letting you create a bunch of sets, and a few other things unless you pay up, but at least not limiting your storage space, ever.
Not sure what’s going to happen if you pay for Google’s expanded storage this year, but not next year. I’d hate to use up all that space over a few years, then stop using Google for the next big thing, and have all my old emails and photos ransomed for more money. If I stop paying, what happens to my stuff?
(via jkOnTheRun and Loose Wire)
UPDATE: Microsoft increased their storage space to 5 free/10 paid gigabytes. Read more here.
That’s the same question I asked a few days ago, and the best I have is (from the old Picasa Web FAQ page)
Quote:”If you cancel your subscription at any time, your Picasa Web Albums account will revert to 250MB of free storage space, and any photos beyond the 250MB limit may be deleted.”
Comment by Haochi | August 14, 2007
It’s my understanding that Live Hotmail (or whatever they’re calling it now) is in the process of upgrading free storage space to 10 GB.
The terms of service for the new, paid Google space states that email and/or files will be deleted if the account is not kept current.
Comment by Eric | August 14, 2007
Sorry, it’s 5 GB for free and 10 GB for paid users of Hotmail.
Comment by Eric | August 14, 2007
Nathan,
I think Google’s doing a pretty good job of not holding your data hostage here :). With Gmail, you can POP your mail out. With PicasaWeb, you can download your entire albums to (the free) Picasa.
Comment by Adam Lasnik | August 15, 2007
Er, download WITH the free Picasa software. You can also download originals even without that software, albeit I don’t think in batch at this time.
Comment by Adam Lasnik | August 15, 2007
[…] The Windows Live Hotmail team put out a big update today, giving free Hotmail account an amazing five gigabytes of email storage. While Yahoo has unlimited inboxes, Gmail offers a little more than half that with 2.8 gigabytes. And while Google just announced a program to pay for more storage, $20 a year for six gigs more, while Hotmail will double you to ten gigabytes for the same price. […]
Pingback by » Windows Live Hotmail Goes To 5 Gigabytes » InsideMicrosoft - part of the Blog News Channel | August 15, 2007
@ Adam Lasnik
True, and POP3 access has been essential when I was evaluating Gmail as a Hotmail replacement. (I have since deleted my Hotmail account.)
It’s a shame I’m still dependent on the Gmail web interface, though, because I still need to check up on my spam. I’d rather be able to download that as well (optionally). I’d love it if you could add that feature, it’d feel like I could take back my mail. I’d love to be able to do my own spam marking/sorting/filtering, even though Gmail’s filter is relatively good.
Comment by Tim | August 15, 2007
Adam, who said anything about holding your data hostage? Are you saying that Google deleting your extra stored messages and photos if you stop paying is no big deal because we can move all our stuff to another provider? It’s an interesting way of putting it, but I’m not sure that solution works every time. I might want to move to Hotmail or Yahoo or Outlook, but I might want to leave my stuff in Gmail as a backup. I don’t know, you make a good point, I guess I’ve just been pissed off enough at Flickr’s free/premium accounts for a while that I don’t like paying for extra storage anymore.
Comment by Nathan Weinberg | August 15, 2007
Yeah, Eric, I wrote this article before the announcement came out. Live Hotmail is now five gigs for free, ten gigs if you pay $20 a year, plus the free SkyDrive storage space.
Comment by Nathan Weinberg | August 15, 2007
Hi Nathan,
I can’t say I know what’ll happen if folks order extra storage and don’t pay the next year, and I understand that you and others might want to “keep stuff in Gmail as a backup.” But with that said, I actually ordered the extra storage myself and expect Google’s storage offerings will become even more compelling over time so you’ll never *want* to move elsewhere :-). It’s just good to have the peace of mind to know know you can, IMHO.
Comment by Adam Lasnik | August 16, 2007