Google drops its Drive storage pricing significantly, puts pressure on Apple to improve iCloud prices
Google has just announced some new price plans for its Google Drive service. The new plans start at $1.99 for 100 GB (down from $4.99), $10 for 1 TB (down from $50) and 10 TB for $99.99. This storage is shared across Drive, Gmail and Google+ Photos.
It should be noted that Google bills customers monthly. Even so, these new price points make Apple’s iCloud storage offerings look awful in terms of value for money.
For iCloud storage, Apple currently charges $20 yearly for 15 GB, $50 yearly for 25 GB and $100 yearly for 55 GB (lumping in the free 5 gigabytes Apple gives to every user). Rather amusingly, Apple’s options do not even allow users to perform a 1:1 backup of their 64 GB and 128 GB devices — the top iCloud tier totals 55 GB of storage.
Whatever way you cut it, Apple’s prices are exorbitant in comparison to Google’s. Doing some basic arithmetic, for one gigabyte of cloud storage over a year, Google charges you 24 cents. Meanwhile, Apple charges you 1.8 dollars. This means Apple’s current rates are 7.5x more expensive than Google’s.
