On Thursday, Google slashed prices on its cloud storage platform by lowering the price of 100GB storage from $4.99/month to $1.99/month, and 1TB from $49.99 to $9.99/month. Meanwhile, the price for 10TB is only $99.99/month. In comparison, Dropbox charges $10/month for 100GB and Microsoft OneDrive charges $50/year, or roughly $4.17/month. Google’s decision to cut Google Drive prices is likely to precipitate Dropbox and competitors to respond with similar cuts to stay competitive. More importantly, however, the price cut sends a subtle signal on Google’s part that it is gearing up to go after business customers both for cloud storage, and for its cloud offerings more generally via its Google Compute Engine platform. By increasing market share in the cloud storage space, Google affirms and underscores the reliability and cost-effectiveness of its cloud-based storage offering, and thereby continues to demonstrate its competency in verticals other than keyword search. Thursday’s aggressive price cut positions Google as a leader in the cloud storage space and stands to continue the transformation of Google’s market perception to a leader in cloud-based infrastructures more generally.
Cloud Computing Today 