Google Increases Cloud Storage Service
July 10, 2014
By Melissa Warten, Contributing Writer
When it comes to price wars, nobody wants a high score—instead, costs drop and drop until enough customers are drawn in. Google is offering businesses more free cloud storage as a means of competing with similar services offered by Amazon Web Service and Microsoft (News - Alert). This Google deal provides two terabytes of data for one year through its startup partner Panzura. The move is part of the race between Google, Amazon and Microsoft to provide remote storage to businesses, reducing companies’ needs to buy and run their own equipment.
Amazon is already offering a similar service, costing one cent per gigabyte monthly, an estimated $120 per year for one terabyte; Microsoft Azure offers the first terabyte of data for as low as 2.4 cents per month. As stated by Rajesh Abhyankar, CEO of cloud consulting firm MediaAgility, the pricing war is a “race to the bottom”—testing which business can combine cheap cloud service with paid products.
A catch to Google’s (News - Alert) system is that the offer only covers one location of access; if companies want different locations to have access to remote storage, the company will have to pay Panzura additional fees. Options such as Box (News - Alert) and Dropbox may already provide cheaper, even free, options to individuals, but on the business end costs can start to add up. Offering any amount of storage for free is a crucial move by Google on companies’ behalves. “Using terabytes [rather than gigabytes, better suited for individuals] is where it starts to get interesting for companies,” said Chris Rimer, global head of partners at Google’s Cloud Platform business.
In this game, the lowest score wins, and it looks like Google is making its move.
Edited by Adam Brandt