Why doesn’t Google increase its free 15GB of cloud storage?

Main points

• 15GB of free Google Cloud storage has been standard since 2013, and Google hasn’t increased it.
• But the cost of maintaining cloud storage is high for Google, which Google hopes to achieve through Google One subscriptions.
• Read on to learn why you shouldn’t expect more free cloud storage from Google.

It seems like everyone and their dog has a Google account these days. It’s the most popular email service with over a billion users every day, but its uses don’t stop there. It’s used as the hub for all Google services, allowing Google Chrome to be easily synced between devices and enabling hundreds of other quality-of-life features.

One of the most convenient perks that comes with getting a Google account is the 15GB of free cloud storage on Google Drive. Of course, this storage is shared between Gmail, Google Drive, and Google Photos, but it’s still useful for saving backups, email attachments, and some documents and preparing them for sharing online.

15GB storage since 2013

This is the standard

The 15GB limit across all Google services was introduced back in 2013, and the standard hasn’t been raised since. Instead, over the years, the company has chosen to remove some of the benefits its cloud storage offers, such as unlimited photo backups for Google Pixel users, essentially making it a worse deal than it was just a few years ago.

This begs the question: Why hasn’t the free storage tier changed? Storage prices have dropped significantly over the years, so Google should, at least in theory, be able to offer more storage to Gmail users. Unfortunately, it’s not that simple, and the company has some good reasons for sticking to the 15GB limit.

Why doesn’t Google increase cloud storage space?

1. Cloud storage is expensive to maintain

Let’s talk about costs first. It’s true that storage prices have dropped significantly over the past few years, with the price per gigabyte for both hard drives and SSDs dropping significantly. However, this fact does not take into account the growth of Google itself, the rising prices of electricity and server space, all of which have resulted in significantly higher maintenance costs for the cloud storage provided by the company.

In a 2021 Google blog post announcing the end of unlimited photo storage, the company mentioned that users add more than 4.3 million GB of photos to Google servers every day. Even without adding free storage tiers, this number will increase significantly every year, so Google’s operating costs are huge. So the biggest and most obvious reason the company hasn’t expanded its free storage tier is cost.

Plus, 15GB is still one of the larger quotas, so Google doesn’t see the need to compete in this space anymore, whereas larger companies generally prefer to do the bare minimum to minimize costs.

2. Ultimately, 15GB is enough for many users

Speaking of minimums: Most users won’t really need more than 15GB of available storage.

For tech enthusiasts, 15GB of storage may feel like a paltry amount, but for casual users who just back up a few photos from their Android phone and receive a few emails a day, 15GB is indeed more than enough. This is especially true if you only use your Google Account for Gmail. Given that the maximum attachment size is 25MB, you can easily store 600 emails with the largest attachment before running out of space.

This is a pretty unrealistic scenario, though, so let’s look at more everyday situations.

I got a personal Gmail account around 2010 and I’ve probably never deleted more than 50 emails since then. I use this account for almost everything and dozens of emails end up rotting in the inbox every day – I know it’s a terrible habit, but who has time to take care of their inbox? How is the result? Over the years, my Gmail has grown to 1.74GB, with over 10,000 unread emails and probably many more. I can live however I want for the rest of my life, and my Gmail account won’t hit the free 15GB limit in any way.

Of course, it’s different if you want to use Google Photos as a backup or Google Drive to share and store some files, but for the most basic purposes, 15GB of free cloud storage is really enough for most people.

3. Google wants to make money

But ultimately, the reason Google doesn’t want to give you more free cloud storage is simple: it wants to make money by selling you the service. Especially now that cloud storage is becoming more popular and widespread, it’s hard to imagine Google taking a step back and offering more free storage, given the push to use Google One.

Of course, it’s not all bad in the paid cloud storage world. I know because I’ve been using Google One for a while. The cheapest plan is very affordable at $1.99 per month, which not only gives you 100GB of cloud storage across Google services, but also comes with some additional benefits. We’re talking about the ability to share storage with up to five people, as well as more editing tools in Google Photos.

However, the real fun begins when you opt for the most expensive Google One plan, called AI Premium. Not only does it include 2TB of cloud storage, but more importantly, it also lets you use Google Gemini Advanced. It’s an improved Gemini AI model that works both as a standalone chatbot and within Google Docs, Gmail, and other Google services (if you purchase the highest-level Google One subscription).

So ultimately, you shouldn’t expect Google to offer more free cloud storage anytime soon, as that would seriously hurt the company’s business and prevent users from buying the services Google wants to launch.

FAQ

Q: Are there alternatives to Google Cloud Storage?

You really shouldn’t worry too much about the lack of free cloud storage available. Ultimately, not only is using Google’s (or anyone else’s) cloud solution not very secure, it’s also not best practice if you value the security of your data. Conversely, if you feel that 15GB is not enough for you, you should consider purchasing your own network-attached storage or even setting up your own cloud storage solution. Not only does it allow you to create a more spacious cloud storage service than those offered by Google or other companies, but it also ends up being cheaper in the long run.