Google Cloud Storage Nearline For The Enterprise And For Developers

If one Terabyte (TB) isn’t enough for cloud storage, Google Cloud Storage Nearline is now available for everyone, especially businesses, to enjoy. A user or a business can enjoy up to as much as 1 Petabyte (PB) of free space for the first 6 months.

Google Cloud Storage Nearline is Google’s answer to Amazon Glacier, and is a platform for businesses and software developers to keep their apps and websites on the cloud. It’s similar to Amazon Glacier in terms of pricing systems: Google Cloud Storage Nearline also charges by the gigabyte taken up, or downloaded.

While the 1PB of storage is something both individual consumers and businesses could want, the service is actually more ideal for corporate clients. Again, the payment scheme is based on the amount of storage space that the client takes up, as well as the bandwidth they consume. Using the Google Cloud Storage cost estimator, storage space of 1TB a month would cost $26. That is, if the customer uses up that much space. As per their pricing table, Standard Storage costs $0.026 per GB per month, while Nearline Storage costs $0.01 per GB per month. Note that data retrieval costs $0.01 per GB per month. Though their pricing table states that if you store 1000GB then delete it before 15 days are up, you’re charged only $5.

Google Cloud Storage Nearline claims that their service costs 40% less than competitors’ rates. But the scheme is really targeted for developers and businesses. If you want to check out their pricing schemes, go to cloud.google.com/storage/pricing.

Individual consumers could take advantage of the new offering if they want to try out the service for free for the first six months. But take note that beyond that, Google Cloud Storage Nearline’s pricing schemes will apply.

For $1.99/month for 100GB or $9.99/month for 1TB of Google Drive space, though, the Google Drive option is definitely less complicated for the consumer. For the enterprise customers and the web developers, Google Cloud Storage Nearline is worth looking into.