Google and MSFT need to try harder

by Mathew on August 9, 2007 · Comments

Storage news from both Google and Microsoft today: The former is giving you the ability to upgrade your combined Gmail and Picasa Web Album storage, in what could be a precursor to a full-fledged Gdrive storage offering, and the latter has launched its news Windows Live Skydrive.

Both are defective, in my opinion. I realize that these are just betas, but Google is way off base with 6 gigabytes of combined Gmail and Picasa storage for $20 a year. The early-bird (or more likely mistaken) price of $1 made a lot more sense to me. Storage is virtually free, and Google knows it — and as more than one person has pointed out already, Yahoo Mail is unlimited, and Flickr.com has unlimited storage for $20.

Windows Live Skydrive, meanwhile, starts with the clunky Windows Folders interface and design and 500 megabytes of storage. What the heck is that all about? I have photos that are 500 megabytes in size (okay, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but not much). Mike Arrington of TechCrunch is similarly unimpressed.

Microsoft is going to have to work a little harder than that, and so is Google. Storage options like JungleDrive that are built using Amazon’s ultra-cheap S3 storage service — and others like the ones described at Read/Write Web — look pretty good compared to either one at the moment.

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  • I’m not sure if they heard me or not. Its been my experience that the ad agencies would love to get a bigger piece of the web pie, but that they don’t really understand it. They prefer to make it look flashy, and hope the design drives traffic
  • Any of these services charging an annual fee, even as small as $20 is a pain in the neck. I am cutting these small fees out as I was paying something like $1,500 is small fees per annum across all the services on offer. Now I chase the free services, thus Docs and Spreadsheets has some of my documents, Zoho has others, etc. . . I am spreading my risk and obtaining all the free portions of each service.
  • PierreS
    I agree. This is a disappointing decision. The sole Google site that I am really using is gmail. I have some interest in Calendar and Docs - but there are other options that I feel are comparable or better (Zoho and Airset). As for Picasa - I really do not see much value to it.

    I was actually pleasantly surprised with Microsoft's decision - it is not much but it is better than what they have done in the past. However, my preference is for either Xdrive or Box.net
  • Storage isn't "virtually free" when you multiply it by hundreds of thousands of users - or millions of them. Email has a very different pattern of usage.

    Having said that, expect Microsoft to continue to push new things in this space over time.
  • GearsofWar
    Microsoft's 500meg limit is obviously carefully set to keep anyone from uploading movies (divx run around 600M min.) or games.

    Another case of someone planning a service based mainly on PREVENTING 5% of the "bad" people from doing questionable stuff, rather than ENABLING the 95% of "good" people from actually, you know, getting something useful :p
    (cf. DRM, etc.)
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