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Google Drive storage prices slashed; now starts at $1.99 for 100GB

The freebie option will stay put at 15GB of complimentary cloud storage space.
Written by Rachel King, Contributor
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Rent. Airfare. The average gallon of milk. These prices all tend to go up on average.

That's not the case in the cloud business.

Amazon Web Services is already famous for routine nips and tucks around its cloud services portfolio, and Google Drive is no different.

The Mountain View, Calif.-based company announced on Thursday that it would be slashing Drive pricing, effective immediately.

Scott Johnston, a director of product management at Google, noted in a blog post that these price reductions were made possible thanks to new infrastructure improvements behind-the-scenes.

Here's a look at the new model:

  • $1.99 for 100 gigabytes (previously $4.99)
  • $9.99 for one terabyte (previously $49.99)
  • $99.99 for 10 terabytes and higher

The freebie option will stay put at 15 gigabytes of complimentary cloud storage space -- an attractive option compared to 10 gigabytes offered by Box and just two gigabytes offered by Dropbox.

To put these allotments into a perspective the average Internet user can understand, Johnston quipped that a terabyte alone would be "enough storage for you to take a selfie twice a day for the next 200 years and still have room left over for… shall we say… less important things."

The Google Apps team has been busy this week.

On Monday, the cloud-based suite of software introduced a new referral program rewarding $15 bonus per new user subscription. The program suggests a new strategy in taking on Microsoft Office 365.

More recently, Google Drive also launched a new online marketplaces dedicated to add-ons, introducing new editing and formatting functionality when producing documents or spreadsheets.

The program is still in developer preview mode, but it is gearing up to launch with more than 50 add-ons in tow, all built by partners using Google Apps Script.

Image via the Google Drive blog

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