> Ask HN: How long until Google charges for private Gmail accounts?
They...already do. It's called Google One, further being pushed by the progressive narrowing of what doesn't count against the 15GB free storage limits.
They...already do. It's called Google One, further being pushed by the progressive narrowing of what doesn't count against the 15GB free storage limits.
I am now exactly the kind of customer you describe, paying for a 200GB Google One plan in large part so I don't have to fiddle with old email to stay under the limit. The price is reasonable, and hopefully as a paying customer I'm less likely to find my products on killedbygoogle.com.
I think most people now look at email as a total archive of all their communications through mail - not a 'mailbox' they prune and delete every so often.
With the general push (at least in Europe) among regulators to decouple (see investigations around app stores, bundled default apps, payment services on stores), I wonder if this model will fall apart some day. The "free" iCloud and Google storage tiers seem to have stagnated, whereas the cost of storage falls.
While you can't do everything supported by first-party iCloud storage (specifically iCloud backups for one example), the files app and support for storage by API ought to provide some competition for these overpriced first party storage options. If regulators force unbundling, we could see a separate ecosystem of storage from apps/services.
Maybe this would help drive more transparency of the true costs of the products and services in question, by decoupling them from "pay us 20x market rate for more storage, since you can't use any other storage with our app".
The business model of all these companies is to tie their software to their expensive storage.
And so you are forced to move to the next iCloud tier ... which is expensive as hell compared to others.