I received an email this week from Google with their latest offer on cloud storage. It’s a good one, targeted at business and group users of the Google Apps platform.
Google Apps, now with infinite space
We’re excited to announce a new option for Google Apps customers: the full suite of productivity tools plus unlimited* file storage and Vault to protect critical business information. It’s a simple way for teams to share, sync and access all their files from everywhere.
For $10/user/month, upgrade now to Google Apps with unlimited storage and Vault. It also includes other business features to help your organization grow, like 99.9% guaranteed email uptime, 24/7 customer support and the freedom to add as many users as you want. To make the switch, sign in to your Admin console and click Upgrade now. Then click Billing and select Upgrade to Google Apps Unlimited. Please note that downgrading to Google Apps without unlimited storage is not an option at this time.
Wow! “Infinite storage”. What a title. I can just see the Google marketing team grinning ear-to-ear when they received approval for that offer. It’s not surprising to me though. As space devices have become cheaper, online providers like Google, Apple, and Microsoft have lowered their cloud storage prices and increased the amount of space consumers and businesses get for free.
When I was in college in the early 90s a professor told us that in the future the hardware would be free as a commodity and people would pay for the value in the software. Computer prices have definitely dropped since then, although not quite to free. But now I see his statement coming true in terms of disk space.
What’s really driving cloud storage is the ability of our electronic devices to share and pull from the same storage. Phone, laptop, tablet, and computer can all pull from the same storage. So cloud storage is really like universal storage. It’s fast, cheap, and easy. The question is which eco-system will we live in? Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, and others are all competing for our attention. That competition is now bringing us “infinite storage” offers. Sweet! To infinity and beyond!