Google is now offering 100GB of online storage to customers that buy a new Chrome OS laptop or desktop computer for $249 and up. You can upload documents, pictures, or virtually any other type of file to that Google Drive space and access it on pretty much any device with a modern web browser.
If you’re using a Chromebook or Chromebox, you can also access your Google Drive files using a file browser as if they were right there on your computer.
Google already offers Google Drive users 5GB of storage for free. But now when you buy a Chrome OS device you can get 20 times more storage… for up to 2 years.
Once your two years are up, you can no longer add files to your Google Drive account unless you either delete an awful lot of stuff to free up space or pay for additional storage.
The good news is that Google won’t automatically delete any files. Anything you’ve already uploaded will remain in your account once you hit your two year anniversary.
According to Google’s support page, 105GB (100GB plus the 5GB already offered) is also as much as you’re going to get for free — even if you buy more than one Chrome OS device. The deal is good for one device per user account (although I suppose there’s nothing stopping you from registering a second account for a second Chromebook).
The 100GB of storage space is available for customers that purchase a new Samsung Chromebook, Samsung Chromebook Series 550 or Samsung Chromebox Series 3. Refurbished models don’t count.
The two-year limit on the 100GB is a bit of a bummer, especially since they more than doubled the price of their cloud storage earlier this year.
It’s $60/year, which I guess isn’t too bad, though does anyone know if you can configure a Chrome OS device to use an alternative cloud storage provider?
I think where Google may be on to a winner is with educational establishments who want to maintain control over how their students are using their devices. Chrome OS complements Google’s domain services quite nicely.
Say you used up 60 GB of that free storage after 2 years. You lose the 40 GB of free space right? When you delete files from that 60 GB of used space, will your max storage capacity go down accordingly? For example, I delete 20 GB of data so now I have 40 GB used out of 40 GB total?
Yep. In fact, according to the Google post, the only way to add more files is to buy more storage. I went ahead and made the logical leap to the idea that you could also delete 95GB+ and continue using the free 5GB everybody gets.
Thanks. This deal doesn’t seem all that great then. No Chromebook for me.
Make that 100GB you’d have to delete. The 100GB Google gives you is on top of the 5GB free Drive space you already get. So when you buy a new Chromebook or Chromebox your total jumps to 105GB.
can this be shared across picasa web albums?
It’s unclear. When you purchase storage from Google, it is shared between Picasa and Drive, and since this 100GB for 2 years is being sold as a “free offer” then I’m guessing it will work the same way, but the details of the offer do not spell this out, so I would wait for clarification if this is important to you.