Google boosts App storage to 30GB for business users

Posted on October 18, 2013 at 4:21 pm

Google is now offering 15GB of free storage on its Drive cloud storage platform, in a move to entice more customers to its services by merging the data storage offered between Gmail and Drive.

Google users were previously offered 5GB of free storage for Drive and another 10GB for Gmail, but now users will get 15GB of storage across both services.

Google’s director of product management Clay Bavor wrote: “With this new combined storage space, you won’t have to worry about how much you’re storing and where.

“Maybe you’re a heavy Gmail user but light on photos, or perhaps you were bumping up against your Drive storage limit but were only using 2GB in Gmail. Now it doesn’t matter, because you can use your storage the way you want.”

Google is also giving Google App users a larger amount of storage. Companies that pay to use the firm’s apps will now be granted a total of 30GB storage.

Storage of files created with Google Apps will not count against the cap. Instead, only emails and attachments filed in the cloud will be included as part of the 30GB limit.

Google has been ramping up its cloud storage offering since introducing it early last year. Drive launched in April 2012, allowing Google users to store files and data in a public cloud controlled by the firm.

Drive has seen much convergence with Google’s other software in recent months. Last November, Drive became integrated with Google+ to offer file sharing and Google launched its preview tool earlier this year.

The announcement comes just ahead of the Google I/O developer conference, where the firm may reveal more numbers on users of its Drive and Gmail products.

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