Sam Davyson

This is big news, I can’t believe it hasn’t been picked up as much as it deserves. Google offer lots of things. And they like to make them free. For instance Blogger had a pro service when Google bought it, now it is all free. Keyhole was only available for big money when Google bought it, Google brought a good version out for free. Same with Sketchup. I admit there are still paid versions of Earth and Sketchup available but they are very much not needed to enjoy the service.

Now Google set a new standard giving away 1GB storage for email totally free. There is still no paid upgrade available for this, but it has increased to ~ 2.7 GB. But today for what I would really say is the first time Google are charging for a service upgrade that many people will require. It is Picasa Web Albums (sort of like an antisocial Flickr, or like a Yahoo Photos clone) and you only get 250 MB for free. That is simply not enough for people who might want to seriously use this service. I thought perhaps they would have it at this gimmicky level for the test and then pump it up to something sensible (really I imagined no limit) when they properly launched.

But no. By the look of it the idea is to charge for anything more than this 250 MB. And already in place is a system to upgrade for $25 a year for 6 GB of additional storage. This is not what a very hardcore user needs. This is what a standard user needs. This is the first time that Google is charging for a something you need to make a service useable. Flickr has limits unless you are willing to pay. And the free limit works out very similarly to this one, and the paid limit is significantly more open (2 GB per month).

Google need to change this I think. Think big, think free.