Google has unified its cloud storage services to give its users more flexibility on ways to store their data across Drive, Gmail and Google+, as the internet giant ramps up its rivalry with Dropbox.
Under the move, all three services will be joined together and will share a pool of 15GB of cloud storage space.
This means that Google Drive users will potentially have more free space than the previous 5GB that was originally offered.
Instead of 10GB in Gmail for attachments and email messages and 5GB for documents and other media in Google Drive, the two are coming together to share amongst each other.
Google+ Photos are also included in the 15GB combined sharing pool. .
However, the move will also see Google drop its lower tier cloud payment package, meaning uswers can no longer buy 25GB of extra space for $2.50 per month.
For users currently on that plan, Google will let them keep it until they cancel or change to another plan. After that, they won’t be able to opt for the 25GB plan any more.
The cheapest plan now is an additional 100GB for $4.99 per month, which is half the price that Dropbox charges currently.
For Google Apps users, these changes will get a 30GB pool of storage to share amongst the three Google services.
To help users keep track of how much storagethey are using for each service, Google will include a pie chart that breaks down the amount of storage used for either Gmail, Drive, or Google+ Photos.
The Google Drive storage page can be found here
