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08.14.07
Google Services Give You More Storage, If You Pay For It
 By Nathan Weinberg
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 gigs for free, 4 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)
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About the Author:
Nathan Weinberg writes the popular InsideGoogle blog, offering the latest news and insights about Google and search engines.
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