Google offers 20GB online storage for price of a latte

Oh, how the cloud grows.

Google announced today (techmeme) that it is offering users 20 gigabytes of storage space online for $5 per year, or about the price of your favorite drink at Starbucks.

For about two years, Google has offered extra storage space -- beyond the roughly 7GB provided through its Gmail e-mail service -- for a nominal fee. Since the space is shared with Google's Picasa Web Albums photo service, it's not hard to fill up if you're toting a 5 or 10 megapixel camera and shooting at the highest quality.

With 20GB, you can put many or all of your family photos in the cloud. (Have a ton of photos? You can purchase up to 16 terabytes, which would run you up to almost $5,000 per year.)

The reason for the change? Storage costs are dropping, and Google says it's been improving its own infrastructure to make the cost-per-gigabyte drop even further.

At the very least, it's a good way to have a secondary in-the-cloud backup solution. You can find more information on Google's storage site.