Did you know that Google actually sells online storage? Apparently, the company has sold virtual space in the cloud for over two years, allowing consumers to pay a yearly fee to store data. The idea does seem enticing, removing valuable pictures off the hard drive and into a space backed by Google's guarantee.
"People today have more personal data online than ever before," the company wrote in an announcement yesterday. "More and more people are starting to move the bulk of their data off the desktop and into servers "in the cloud," where it's accessible from any computer or mobile device and easily shareable with friends and family."
According to Google, the company is lowering the price of its cloud drives, allowing consumers to purchase 20 GB for $5 USD a year. Google is also providing larger capacities, ranging from 80 GB to a freakish 16 TB. That's right: 16 terabytes of virtual storage for a whopping mind-blowing $4,096 USD a year. That's no joke. Google's 8 TB cloud drive only costs a mere $2,048 per year. that's not chump change.
Currently Gmail (7 GB) and Picasa Web Album (1 GB) users already get free storage, however the purchased drives acts like an overflow; the free space essentially gives customers a few GB more storage for the same price. The cloud drives also seem locked to either Gmail or Picasa Web Album, keeping the content focused on images rather than whatever consumers want to upload.
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