Google Rolls Out Online Storage Services

An anonymous reader writes "The associated press reports that Google is slated to provide online storage at a price. From the article: 'Web search and Internet services company Google Inc. on Friday began selling expanded online storage, targeted for users with large picture, music or video file collections. The prices range from $20 per year for 6 gigabytes of online storage; $75 per year for 25 gigabytes of storage; $250 per year for 100 gigabytes of storage; and $500 per year for 250 gigabytes of storage.' Is this too expensive for what there offering, or are you going to make use of it?"

So this was their plan all along

[msblack]

So when will they start charging everyone who has used Picassa these new annual fees? I'm sure a lot of people will gladly pay hosting fees.

Privacy?

[Anonymous Coward]

So, is google going to search through all my content to see what I have?

Then send me more targeted advertisements when I use their services? You know that they can link all that up.

Just how "do no evil" will google be with all this information on you available at their fingertips?

I suppose you could just always encrypt all your uploads... hmm.

Well,

[martinelli]

I've always had an issue with online storage. Sure, you have a massive capacity. But, think about the time it takes you to upload, download, etc. For the $500 a year pricetag on the 250gb drive, I could go out and purchase a few 250gb external drives. Although online storage is great for protecting against a physical disaster, it's simply too clumsy right now to be used effectively.

Re:Is that all they're offering?

[nuzak]

> I can get 500 GB of local storage for $100

Yes, and I can get a pair of shoes or a blowjob for that too. What's that got to do with online storage, which presumably you put online for a reason?

$500 / 250 GB

[3p1ph4ny]

Why do that when I can buy two $250 drives and put them in a mirror RAID array? I'll probably get more storage, and it will last longer.

Re:Is that all they're offering?

[eln]

That's my point, the "advantage" the article talks about is that you can use the storage with Google's own products. If you could use the storage to, say, host a website or something, then it might be worth it. If all I can do is use it on Google's product offerings, it is a rip off.

 

Re:I won't be making use of it

[eln]

You're right. Just like a game manufacturer wouldn't dream of trying to make extra money by slapping advertisements all over a game I already paid $60 for, Google would never try to make extra cash data mining storage that they are already being paid for.

Re:I will probably use it.

[DonCarlos]

It still may go faster to just burn these data on DVD and send it using DHL/USPS than first waste hours uploading such amount of data and then getting it back.

Re:What does google offer...

[Richard_at_work]

What does Google offer that your $200 computer can't? Redundancy. Massive redundancy.

Re:Is that all they're offering?

[Vellmont]

That's my point, the "advantage" the article talks about is that you can use the storage with Google's own products.


The article was written by a journalist for Forbes. It also says nowhere that this is the only way to use the storage.

Re:Amazon S3

[Lost Engineer]

Looks like it's only cheaper at 100GB+ to me.

Seems like most people should be able to get their important documents into the 6GB drive.

Re:Not quite GDrive, or even S3...

[MushMouth]

It may be cheaper than S3, however S3 only charges you for the things you actually store and bandwidth, there is no need to pay today for space you may need in the future.

Re:Doomed

[WombatDeath]

Sure, but my data storage requirements are fairly modest. 6GB is plenty, $20/year is pretty trivial and with a service like this I can forget about the data until I need it. If I had a quarter of a terabyte of important data (and I really can't imagine that happening) I'd probably look for alternatives. As it stands, this suits me nicely.

my 2 cents

[digitalsushi]

I pay rsync.net about 6 bucks a month, educational discount at half off, for 6 gigs of space on their servers. I'm in the USA, the server is in Europe, and it's then copied to another continent (probably the USA again... somewhere not in my apartment.) Even at half off, I'm paying rsync.net a lot more than the google thing costs. And the google thing sounds expensive to most people.

Most people here think they can whip together some one-task server with a software raid to back their data up. In fact, many of us do this. But out of the set of us that can manage this, what portion of us are storing that data locally? And how many are checking that the backups are working properly? How many of us have actually restored to verify we know exactly what we're doing? I've been a linux admin for 8 years, and I could still see myself making an error that would cost me all my data. All the people who haven't ever done a backup server and think they're just going to whip together a solution some weekend are people playing a very risky game. Yeah yeah, I hear you saying, "this guy thinks I'm a moron, or thinks he's so smart"- listen, I'm just saying, until you've tested something new from scratch a couple times, you're risking your files to fate.

Now, take the google thing. Yeah, they're gonna mine it. Just for advertising eyeballs, but they're gonna do it. Do you care? Should you? That's not relevant to this. What IS relevant is that they're going to back your data up better than your home-rig will. Yeah, yours is faster and bigger. But what happens when you forget to cron the backup? Or assume a symlink got tarred? Or fat-finger the restore and lose your set? Or, heaven forbid, you have a fire? What if you lost your backups with your source in the same physical accident? Or theft?

And then you'd kick yourself for not having at least that 50 megabytes of stuff you actually can't re-download. A photo of your first girlfriend from high school. An email from an old friend that died. Stuff that had only those two copies, and you watched them both unlink from the disk before you could stop the delete command. Whoops.

Now, if you dont want them mining it, get a host like rsync.net. Nah, I dont work for them. They're awesome only in that they delivered what I paid for. They're not one of those "unlimited until we say so" shops, and the data always gets through. They're a small shop and the guys there love support. Anyways, I'm not saying they're the ones for sure- there are plenty of other places. I just wanted the rsync support. I sleep just a little easier knowing that, however stupid I end up being, some of my stuff exists somewhere smarter than I can accidentally destroy.

So there you have it. I'm no guru, just an average, run of the mill professional linux admin, who trusts a service provider that does backups for a living better than I can do myself at my own home. The end.

Re:Yes, it's too expensive

[kestasjk]

Holy bejeesus, I can't believe you got modded up for that completely misleading comment. It's not $99 just for storage, it's also email storage, one-click storage of web pages and photo pages. Groups. Automatic calander storage, bookmark storage, address book storage, email storage (didn't you already mention this?) and some third party data storage. Easy Mac and PC (and Web) access to upload and download from anywhere (Eee.. storage?), video tutorials(Google's web apps also come with these), backup application(a storage interface?), etc... the list (of file types you can store) is very long.

Check it out [apple.com].

I use it every day and love it. I have found no better coupling than iLife and .Mac. It just works.

The stuff you mentioned is basically just.. storage. You also mention calendars, web hosting, and e-mail. Google does all that too, of course. Except it does that part for free.

Last I checked Google just works, and I expect this will just work too, and it looks like it'll just work for less money.