Why Google’s price cut made the consumer cloud biz a lot cloudier
March 16, 2014
Grazed from CNet. Author: Richard Nieva.
If there was any question that the cloud storage business is a high stakes game, Google erased all doubt this week. The search giant shook up the consumer cloud world by drastically slashing its paid plans. Fifteen gigabytes of storage are still free, but 100GB are now $1.99 per month, down from $4.99. Even more impressive is the fact that you can get an entire terabyte of space for $9.99 a month, which used to be $49.99.
The move signals a clear, ruthless investment by Google. And when a giant like Google makes a push like that, it reverberates through the entire ecosystem, and the other players have no choice but to react. This isn’t the first time Google has made a change that sent other companies jumping. When it began to re-categorize emails in Gmail, at least one firm that depends on the platform noted the change in an SEC filing, under the section "Risk Factors." The comparison isn’t directly analogous, but the fairly obvious point remains. Google’s stirrings are a big deal…
Calling out Google’s price cut announcement as a turning point might seem a little out of place in a market as bustling as consumer cloud storage. (And yes, I’m aware of the absurdity of that last sentence.) The boring business of storing digital bits used to be etched in old guard tech companies like IBM, but has since been remade in the image of youthful upstarts like Box and Dropbox. Both with respective youthful leaders. Related: Dropbox CEO Drew Houston plays guitar in a 90s cover band called the Angry Flannels…
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