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What the new policy’s multi-tiered approach (Education Fundamentals/Standard, Teaching and Learning Upgrade, Education Plus) means for educators. How to move email and files from one account to another. How to best back up and clean out Gmail, Drive, and Photos. Options for taking control of your data sprawl. Let’s explore what this new policy means for educators and what you can do as a free Gmail user. For consumers relying on Google’s free offerings, the threat to dump data raises fears. Google’s new storage policy has left many scratching their heads. PT: Clarified that the new storage capacity is shared by Gmail, Google+, and Google Drive.This post was originally published December 15, 2020. PT: Added that business using Google Apps will see their storage increase to 30GB. Or perhaps it’s simply nothing more than a shot across the bow of Dropbox: you now get 15GB because Google can give you 15GB.Įither way, it makes Gmail, Google+, and Google Drive that much more appealing to serious Google services users. It’s possible that at I/O, Google will reveal that Drive or Google+ will incorporate a more multimedia approach. What that is, Google is not saying - yet. If Google is offering you more storage, then there is something that extra storage helps you do that will help Google make more money. Nevermind “do no evil,” Google - as we all know - is in the business of making money. There’s no doubt that the 15GB is a game-changer in the free storage market.
The announcement follows a Google Drive update from last week that allows you to save files from the Web directly to Drive. A quick look at competitors shows that Dropbox currently starts free subscribers at 2GB, Microsoft SkyDrive users get 7GB, and Apple iCloud, Amazon Cloud Storage, and SugarSync offer 5GB for free.
The new amount of storage space will give people who use Google services the most generous storage capacity of any player in the free online-storage game. Businesses using Google Apps will see their storage go up across Google Drive, Google+, and Gmail from 25GB to 30GB. The changes will “roll out over the next couple of weeks,” Google said in a blog post. Google made the announcement just before Google I/O developers conference begins this week. Google’s capacity to store your files will jump by a factor of three, the company said Monday, rising from 5GB to 15GB shared across Google+, Drive, and Gmail.