Google Inc (GOOG): It’s All About Unity

Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) has established several platforms on which users can receive five gigabytes of free storage for e-mails, music, photo sharing and other items that users might like to store in the cloud. This free storage is available to users of Google Drive, Gmail (10 GB) and Google+ services. While 5 GB is a modest amount for the sake of storage, it is free for having an account, which is nice. If there is a challenge to it, though, it is that those who have accounts in each of these services did not have any “overdraft” protection – if a user had exhausted his 4 GB of storage on Gmail, for example, but had some available space on Google Drive, that free storage could not be used; the user would have to pay for additional storage on Gmail.

Apparently, Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) is relaxing these rules now, as the company is now unveiling an option for 15 GB of total free storage space to use among all three services. Now the space can be used however the user deems necessary, so that the full 15GB must be exhausted before the user would need to buy more cloud storage space. According to a post on the Google drive blog, “With this new combined storage space, you won’t have to worry about how much you’re storing and where.”

Image: Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG)

“For example, 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 2 GB in Gmail. Now it doesn’t matter, because you can use your storage the way you want.”

The Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) blog post goes on to say this new feature will roll out to all users in the next couple of weeks, and paid storage upgrades are handled in one set amount across all platforms – starting at about $5 per month for 100GB. This basically rules out the paid 25GB upgrade just for Gmail.

Let us know your thoughts about Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) streamlining its cloud storage service. Do you use one or more of these services? Do you think this will help you manage your accounts better? Give us your feedback in the comments section below.

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