Google announced on Monday that storage capacity across Drive, Google+ and Gmail is climbing to 15GB. The changes, revealed just ahead of the company’s annual Google I/O developers conference, will begin to roll out over the coming weeks according to an official blog post on the subject.
The move now makes Google the leader in free storage capacity. Dropbox currently offers 2GB of free space, Microsoft SkyDrive gives users 7GB of free storage and Amazon Cloud Storage, Apple iCloud and SugarSync all offer 5GB of free storage.
In the blog post, Clay Bavor, product management director for Google Apps, said the combined storage space means users won’t have to worry about how much they are storing and where. If you were a heavy Drive user but still had plenty of storage in your Gmail account, that’s no longer an issue, because you can now use the storage any way you want, he noted.
To help users along, Google is making updates to the Google Drive storage page so people will better understand how they are using storage space. There will be a convenient pie chart that breaks down usage across Drive, Gmail and Google+ Photos, we’re told.
It’s certainly welcomed news for users of Google services as the idea of having to juggle storage and manage which accounts to allocate more storage to is now a thing of the past. Why exactly Google decided to give everyone 15GB of free space, however, is still up for debate.
