Will google reshape online backups?
Another followup on my backup article. Google has recently announced the ability to buy online storage at prices dramatically lower than anyone else: 20 gigabytes for $5/year. This kind of pricing would take what I’m currently paying for S3 a month and cover my online backup for the entire year — over a 10X reduction in cost.
That would make online backups very economical, and with a vendor you can trust isn’t going away any time soon.
Only one problem. But it’s a big one.
The rumored “gDisk” product has never been announced, much less made available — this is Google’s version of Apple’s mobileMe iDisk. The only ways to actually use this inexpensive disk space is via gmail (Google’s email system) or Picasa (their photo sharing).
That makes this a non-starter for me. Neither platform is one I’d consider using for backups; the gymnastics needed to make it usable is a killer. So anyone who saw the pricing here and said “wow!” can go back to waiting. But maybe this’ll cause some of the other vendors to start reducing their pricing as well, because you have to believe Google is going to release gDisk sooner or later. Of course, I know people who’ve been expecting it sooner or later for a couple of years now, so maybe we can pull “sooner or” out of that wait loop.
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