Google offers lots of free cloud storage to take on Amazon Web Services
The launch of Cloud Storage Nearline brings Google firmly into the battle against Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and all the other cloud platforms currently available, but, unlike search, Google is way behind the competition.
To gain some early customers, Google is offering an enormous 100 petabytes (100 million gigabytes) of storage for free. To a single customer, that is enough to last a lifetime, but for a medium sized business it may last a few months.
Cloud Storage Nearline is focused on offering document, file and folder storage for all types of content. This makes it applicable to almost every company that does business on the web.
Google plans to offer 1GB for less than a penny, meaning customers are likely to save over £6,000 with the Amazon Web Services deal. The offer also extends to other cloud services, meaning any customer using cloud storage for a business may be entitled to some free storage.
That said, Google is actively promoting Cloud Storage Nearline against Amazon Web Services. It is pretty obvious the two companies would clash, since AWS is in first place by most metrics on users and income.
Even though Google has kept most of its business customer-to-customer, it has tried to expand into enterprise level storage, apps and security. Some of these have worked out, but Google is still an outsider compared to Microsoft, IBM, Cisco and HP, who have all invested billions in the enterprise market.
Amazon and Google are both well known for long-term goals that harm the short-term income of the company. Google might be willing to drop £6,000 for a new client, but we could see AWS offering even better terms to stay on as a customer and not leave for Google.
Published under license from ITProPortal.com, a Net Communities Ltd Publication. All rights reserved.
Photo Credit: wavebreakmedia/Shutterstock