Google has announced a new series of cloud storage plans arriving for Google Account holders, including a new family option for divvying up a single storage plan amongst up to five members.
Called Google One, the new plans will replace existing Google Drive paid storage plans and include 100GB storage for $1.99 a month, 200GB for $2.99 a month, and 2TB for $9.99 a month (down from $19.99).
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As a result, Google is removing its 1TB/$9.99 plan, but will continue to offer 15GB storage for free to all Google Drive users. The other existing tier that will continue to be offered is 30TB for $300 a month.
As before, the new storage plans provide users with space for Google Drive, Gmail, and original quality photos and videos (including 4K) in Google Photos.
All the paid plans come with access to live chat support, a feature that was previously limited to G Suite business account holders. The changes will be seen first by paying Google Drive users in the U.S. "in the coming months", with rollout to users in other countries shortly after.
For the sake of comparison, Apple's iCloud monthly storage plans are 50GB for $0.99, 200GB for $2.99, 2TB for $9.99, and 5GB free storage for non-paying users.
Top Rated Comments
(View all)This is hopefully good timing for iCloud users. Hopefully Apple will follow and reduce the costs of the current plans.
Turns out that Google matched Apples pricing that Apple set about a year ago.But what of the privacy of your cloud data? I’m sure Google combs through all of it in order to better deliver advertising to you.
I use Arq https://www.arqbackup.com/ to encrypt my data before sending it to Google Drive and B2 Backblaze. But yeah this is a huge point people need to consider before using Google.This is hopefully good timing for iCloud users. Hopefully Apple will follow and reduce the costs of the current plans.
It seems Google just copied Apple's pricing grid for the later tiers. I'm not sure Apple wants to remain the cheapest option between both. Microsoft One Drive is hands on the cheapest though, with $100 for 5 TB of storage for the year + Office 365.What I want from Apple is more free storage. You can't do anything with 5 GB, and the competition has more free storage anyways (Microsoft, Google Dropbox*).
* I've always had 7.5 GB of free storage because I shared their promo videos back in the days
It seems Google just copied Apple's pricing grid for the later tiers. I'm not sure Apple wants to remain the cheapest option between both. Microsoft One Drive is hands on the cheapest though, with $100 for 5 TB of storage for the year + Office 365.
Pay 99c a month, and you get 50GB of iCloud storage - more than Google ever gave you for free. The tradeoff is better privacy. Surely that's worth a dollar a month? If not... we can't help you.What I want from Apple is more free storage. You can't do anything with 5 GB, and the competition has more free storage anyways (Microsoft, Google Dropbox*).
* I've always had 7.5 GB of free storage because I shared their promo videos back in the days
I just help a friend set this up where she works to back up their small, 2-drive NAS; at $0.005/GB stored on Backblaze B2 after the initial purchase of the software, it's practically a no-brainer for everyone involved.
I am really happy to see I'm not the only one doing this. :) I was shocked how fast B2 took my data. The initial 160GB upload took hours with my FIOS connection. They've been amazing.What I love about Arq is, I have it also backing up to my Google Drive account (encrypted), 2 external drives (one at work, one at home), --- backing up the entire Home folder on my Mac. Set it to not backup while on battery - it does its thing automatically when I plug in to power.
I have had to download 15GB of data from B2 - at $.01/GB down - took minutes and was super easy and super cheap. Just make sure to write down those encryption keys into 1Password or something. :)
Love their hard drive stats reports! https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-stats-for-q1-2018/