Google lowers prices on Picasa Web Album / Gmail Storage 11/11/09 - 19.09
A couple of years ago I wrote about Google introducing the pricing structure for Picasa Web Albums. I regarded it as quite a step for Google to start charging for something that consumers would need (I say this to distinguish from ad sales, or enterprise hardware they sell).
The prices were also a bit high. Well now they’ve come out with the headline “Twice the storage for a quarter of the price” which means it’s now costing 1/8 of what it used to cost. Initially it was $20/yr for 6 GB and now they’re offering 20 GB for $5/yr so it’s actually more than 3 times the storage for a quarter of the price from their original offering – but there may have been intermediate prices making todays headline accurate.
This is really very competitive. You can get 80 GB for $20/yr. An external hard drive here is around £30-40 for 80 GB – obviously you wouldn’t but a drive so small – but it’s probably ideal for most peoples photo collections. This sort of pricing means that over three years the price is roughly the same rented from Google or by buying a hard drive.
I’m not trying to say that both give you the same thing – obviously there is a lot more flexibility with an external drive than Picasa Web Albums / Gmail. But if you want to have your photos backed up then this seems like a very economical way to go about it.