More storage, less costs, and free experts
Google has changed its storage service and not only can you rent cheaper as a consumer, the entire service has also been rebranded: Google One. At first glance, it looks like Google has simply added some new storage options: you can now get 200 GB of storage for $ 3 a month in a Google Drive (that name has not changed) and the existing 1TB for a tenner a month has been upgraded to 2TB for the same price. It is now possible to share your storage space with up to five family members. Everyone gets their own share, so it’s a good way to give families or groups that use a lot of Google products an extra kind of discount. five times 100GB per month suddenly becomes 2TB per month, so that’s four times as much backup storage for the same money.
Storage is not the only thing you get at Google One. It seems like the start of an all-in-one service that Google is going to roll out bit by bit, where the advantage is that you as a user of Google One can always contact a – human – Google expert if you do not get anywhere, whether that is a service or a product from Google. In the US these experts will be available 24 hours a day, but in other countries, they will still see what is possible.
Extra bonus
The company also promises to give people other bonuses for using Google One: credit in the Play Store, discounts on hotels you find through Google Search and more. Those extra perks will be expanded over time, said Google One’s director Larissa Fontaine against TechCrunch.+
The new app that Google has created to manage their storage will therefore probably do much more in the future.
As is often the case with Google, the deployment is being phased: in the coming months, all US storage subscriptions will be converted to Google One and then the rest of the world will only be up. The good news is that by that time it might be a little clearer what you get when you become a ‘member’ of Google One. Perhaps the storage as time goes on is only a small part of the benefit of the service, but for now, it is good to know that the storage will be cheaper.