Chromebook buyers to get 1TB of free Google cloud storage
Search giant ups ante in war with Microsoft and other cloud storage rivals
Google is to offer people buying its Chromebook laptops 1TB of free cloud storage for two years.
The deal matches that offered by Microsoft, which bundles 1TB of cloud storage with its Office 365 business subscriptions (although this also includes access to Microsoft Office apps as well).
Google described the offer, worth $240 (£160), as a “bonus for the holiday season”. Chromebooks can be picked up for as little as $199.
Alex Vogenthaler, Google Drive group product manager, said in a blog post: “That’s enough space to keep more than 100,000 awkward holiday sweater pics safe and shareable in Drive.
“With that much free storage, you can use your Chromebook for work, play and pretty much everything else you’ll do this holiday season,” he added.
All claims for free storage must be made before 1 January.
In April, Microsoft increased its storage limits in OneDrive for Business from 25GB to 1TB per user. In September, it upped its free storage offering to 30GB after people complained of having insufficient storage for iOS 8.
Sign up today and you will receive a free copy of our Future Focus 2025 report - the leading guidance on AI, cybersecurity and other IT challenges as per 700+ senior executives
In October, Google gave students unlimited cloud storage via its Drive for Education initiative. It also gave users of its Drive for Work service unlimited storage in June.
Other cloud storage players have also upped the ante with Box removing limits on its offerings back in June in a bid to win over enterprise users.
Going against the grain has been Bitcasa, which removed its unlimited offering in October, citing concerns that users had abused the service.
Rene Millman is a freelance writer and broadcaster who covers cybersecurity, AI, IoT, and the cloud. He also works as a contributing analyst at GigaOm and has previously worked as an analyst for Gartner covering the infrastructure market. He has made numerous television appearances to give his views and expertise on technology trends and companies that affect and shape our lives. You can follow Rene Millman on Twitter.
-
What does modern security success look like for financial services?Sponsored As financial institutions grapple with evolving cyber threats, intensifying regulations, and the limitations of ageing IT infrastructure, the need for a resilient and forward-thinking security strategy has never been greater
-
Yes, legal AI. But what can you actually do with it? Let’s take a look…Sponsored Legal AI is a knowledge multiplier that can accelerate research, sharpen insights, and organize information, provided legal teams have confidence in its transparent and auditable application
-
Australia internet banking outage blamed on DDoS mitigation serviceNews A technical issue with Akamai's DDoS platform crashed a number of online banking services
-
AWS claims to have blocked the largest DDoS attack in historyNews Cloud giant reveals three days of malicious traffic hit a peak of 2.3 Tbits/sec
-
Google to offer DDoS protection for news sitesNews Project Shield will route traffic through the company's cloud platform to prevent outages
-
Twitch gets hit with DDoS attack by the Lizard SquadNews Hacking collective claims responsibility for DDoS attack that knocked Amazon's latest purchase offline
