WebProNews

Gmail used to offer a gigabyte of storage to new users, but now it offers at least seven gigs. Picasa comes with a gig. Sometimes that's not enough. While Google has offered the ability to pay for additional storage, the company has now reduced the prices for it.

"You can now buy 20 GB for only $5 a year — that's twice as much storage for a quarter of the old price, and enough space for more than 10,000 full resolution pictures taken with a five megapixel camera," says Google Software Engineer Elvin Lee. "Since most people have less than 10 GB of photos, chances are you can now save all your memories online for a year for the cost of a triple mocha. If you need more than 20 GB, plans range all the way up to 16 TB, which is enough room for 8 million full resolution photos! And Google paid storage offers an extra level of security, protection and accessibility that you can't get with an external drive — at a similar cost per gigabyte."

The entire price list is as follows:
     
20 GB ($5.00 USD per year)
   
80 GB ($20.00 USD per year)
   
200 GB ($50.00 USD per year)
   
400 GB ($100.00 USD per year)
   
1 TB ($256.00 USD per year)

2 TB ($512.00 USD per year)
   
4 TB ($1,024.00 USD per year)
   
8 TB ($2,048.00 USD per year)
   
16 TB ($4,096.00 USD per year)

"While today's announcement is exciting from a practical standpoint, it's also indicative of one of the strongest computing trends of the year: cloud computing going mainstream," a Google representative tells WebProNews. "A number of factors are helping the average user move to 'the cloud.' First, the technology continually increases in efficiency, so that, as in this case, we can store data ever more cheaply and pass on those savings to our users. Second, a new breed of net-centric hardware is giving consumers faster, easier, more comprehensive access to the cloud --netbooks and smartphones are among the hottest gadgets this holiday season."

When a user purchases an additional storage plan, that plan will be automatically renewed each year. However, if a user wants to, they can disable auto-renewal by going to the purchase page and choosing the free plan. Google will contact users 30 days before renewal. It takes about 24 hours for new storage to appear.
 

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