Google disrupts cloud storage landscape with huge price cuts

Who says it costs quite high to pay for cloud storage plans? Well, Google just moved to shake up its competitors in the cloud storage services sector by reducing a big chunk of its Google Drive prices to near free levels compared to other cloud offerings.

Imagine these price comparisons: When you first sign up for Google Drive, you will find that there is no charge for the first 15 gigabytes you use for storing data. The paid plans start actually with 100 GB for $1.99 per month from the previous price of $4.99. That is nearly half the price of what Dropbox offers, which is at $9.99 per month for the same storage plan. Microsoft asks $25 per year for 50 GB of storage within its OneDrive platform, or roughly $2.01 per month, while Apple’s annual 50 GB plan costs $100. Those prices are no doubt a lot more expensive than what Google offers. To eclipse all that, Google Drive will slash only $9.99 a month from your credit card for a one terabyte of storage, down from the original price of $49.99.

From all indications, Google is becoming bullish toward a business where it is not the leader yet unlike in search engines. Despite all that, its market leading competitors, including Dropbox, are sure to follow suit in a probable attempt not to be left by existing users and not to lag behind Google’s pricing scheme.

If Google’s attitude toward how it assigns prices to its cloud services continues, the time will come when these data storage services will become free and will have no limit in terms of space capacity.

Google is not alone. Amazon and Microsoft are also among the cloud service providers that constantly shrink their price trends for a service that was once deemed expensive but eventually became affordable even for individual users.

There are downsides, however, to Google’s sudden push to cut cloud storage prices. Other providers could substantially reduce their prices as well, but at the expense of the quality of the services they provide for commercial and personal use.

There are also noticeable differences in the services of Google and Dropbox in particular. Dropbox supports file syncing with Microsoft documents while Google Drive is only a web-based application. Personally, I like Google Drive more than Dropbox because of the productivity apps embedded in Google’s product. If the Mountain View giant continues to enhance those apps, chances are it might soon enough eclipse Dropbox’s position in the cloud storage market.