Google Upgrades Its Cloud Storage Tiers
All Google accounts receive 15GB of free storage, with the first paid tier starting at $1.99 per month for 100GB. Under “Google One” this is not changing, but there is a new 200GB tier for $2.99. Meanwhile, instead of getting only a terabyte, $9.99 a month now provides 2TB of storage.
The upgrade to two terabytes on the $9.99 plan matches what Apple has offered for a while, and the 200 GB plan is priced the same. Google users can also now share their storage plans with up to five family members. I use Apple’s family sharing which shares our iCloud storage with up to six people.
I think it’s noteworthy that the Google Drive paid plans aren’t cheaper than the Apple offerings. In fact, Apple’s cheapest paid plan is $0.99/month for 50 GB whereas Google’s first paid tier is $1.99 for 100 GB. Clearly, Apple isn’t price-gouging its premium users. Where Google continues to lead is in the free tier. Versus iCloud’s infamous 5 GB, Google accounts get 15 GB for free on top of other perks like unlimited photo uploads in Google Photos. What makes this even more maddening is Google will give this storage to anyone, regardless of whether they have bought Google hardware or not.
Apple currently lets anyone trial iWork for iCloud with a 1 GB storage bucket. If you associate the Apple ID with an Apple device, it gets upgraded to 5 GB. If you buy a second-hand iPad from 2013, you can get 5 GB. If you buy a brand new $1000+ iPhone X, you get 5 GB.
There are some asterisks attached to Google’s free offering, whether that is resolution caps on photos and videos, data-mined ads, or whatever else. It’s all insignificant. There’s no way to reconcile this apart from saying Apple is too stingy to free cloud users — remembering that free users make up the majority of iOS device users. It’s saddening that the premise of an article I wrote in 2014 continues to hold.
I really, really, hope Apple sorts this out. Student Apple IDs now get 200 GB for free as a concession to the education market. You can argue over what is a fair number but at this point, I’ll take anything. If Apple only made the $0.99 tier the new free offering, giving away 50 GB to every Apple customer, it would make a huge difference.