Google Drive triples free storage to 15 GB
We were just talking about how Amazon is competing with Apple and other cloud services by offering 5 GB of storage for free. Now, that turns out to be old news, because today Google announced that free storage spanning several Google services like Gmail, Google+ and Google Drive is now going to come in the extra-large economy size -- a whopping 15 GB.
Google says the changes will be rolling out over the next several weeks to all customers. All that space is shared, so if you are just using Google Drive Photo (for example), that 15 GB is shared with any other Google services that require storage. Still, 15 GB is a very competitive number since Apple and Amazon give you 5 GB with iCloud and Amazon Cloud Drive, respectively, and Dropbox provides a measly 2 GB free. A similar service from MediaFire offers 10 GB of free storage, but the free tier includes ads. All the services allow you to get more storage for an additional fee. It will be interesting to see if Apple and other services respond to Google's challenge or stand pat.
With this move, Google has unified its storage system, a similar concept to the Apple pool of iCloud storage, although at this point Apple does not count image storage in Photo Stream against your 5 GB allotment. Google has a free iOS app so you can access this storage space, and it can also be managed through a web browser on any computer.
