Google Starts Charging | 14/06/06 - 14.38 |
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.
There’s nothing that says Google won’t pull a Gmail and slowly upgrade the initial 250mb limit over time as they get a since of user growth and initial load statistics.
As it stands now, 250MB seems to be fine for a free service that might be aimed at people familiar with Google but not other photo hosting sites.
If people who are into the latest and highest MP cameras feel that Google’s free offering isn’t plausible, or that the paid version doesn’t offer enough, then use an already established service like Flickr.
At this point in the game, it’s not a “Google or nothing” show. We all still have choices. Use what is right for you and your needs and leave Google to decide what they think is suitable for their _free_ services.
Yes I hope they do “pull a Gmail” and you are right it may provide a good solution for entry level photographers to share their photos without any hassle. At the same time I suppose it is clever of Google to target this (rather unsatisfied) market rather than trying to tackle the very popular Flickr where they would be far less likely to be successful. Even so I think it is a sizeable change for Google to begin charging for a service.
[...] couple of years ago I wrote about Google introducing the pricing structure for Picasa Web Albums. I regarded it as quite a step for [...]