Google reduces prices for consumers on online storage plans, wants more paid users
With Google dropping prices on one terabyte of storage to $9.99 a month, a number of competitors will feel the pressure of dropping their prices too. However, experts believe that these developments are much more than a price war.
In comparison, Apple charges $100 a year for its 50 GB plan while Microsoft’s OneDrive costs about $25 for 50 GB for the same time period. Similarly, both DropBox and SugarSync want $9.99 (100 GB) and $55 per month (1 TB) respectively.
But that’s not all – this price reduction gives a consumers a better deal than Google’s own cloud storage platform for developers, Amazon’s S3 as well as Microsoft’s Azure storage platforms too.
While a number of cloud storage startups use these platforms and even get discounts for using such large amounts of storage, this move will ensure that consumers will still get a better deal than developers will going forward.
However, one might wonder why Google is doing this: it’s simple, really. Such a price reduction means that it want to take its competitors out of business in a market that it doesn’t dominate just yet.
And there are clear reasons why this is so.
Firstly, users think of online storage and syncing when one thinks of DropBox while Microsoft OneDrive is built into Windows 8.
Google Drive, on the other hand, isn’t yet recognized as these two tech giants are even if people love its collaborative productivity apps. That’s an area that Microsoft is now taking seriously with its online (and free) versions of Word, Excel, Powerpoint and OneNote.
So, by just cutting prices, one can see how Google should be able to garner a host of paid users even if Microsoft’s Office suite is still used by corporations around the world.
Yet what makes the next few months interesting is the fact that not only has Google cut prices but it is also increasing its investments on products that use its storage service.
