Google Combines Drive, Gmail And Google+ Photo Storage Into 15Gb Pool

May 13, 2013

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Google's efforts to [url="http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/10/google-babel-to-become-hangouts-chat-system/"]streamline[/url] aren't limited to some [url="http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/13/google-drops-sms-search/"]spring[/url] [url="http://www.engadget.com/2013/03/13/google-reader-shut-down-spring-cleaning/"]cleaning[/url] and more [url="http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/07/google-maps-redesign-leak/"]spartan[/url] [url="http://www.engadget.com/2013/04/09/google-play-store-4-0-redesign-rolling-out-to-android-phones-and/"]interfaces[/url]. Today the company is breaking down the artificial walls between the pools of online storage provided for [url="http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/02/gmail-lets-us-directly-add-google-calendar-events/"]Gmail[/url], [url="http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/06/google-drive-app-file-sharing/"]Drive[/url] and [url="http://www.engadget.com/2013/02/27/google-plus-photos-app-new-screenshots/"]Google+ Photos[/url]. Instead of 10GB for all your messages and attachments, alongside a separate 5GB repository for your photos and documents, now all three sites share a common 15GB slice on Google's servers. So, if you happen to be a little photo crazy, but are nowhere near the limit on your Gmail account, you no longer need to rely on workarounds like archiving images as attachments. This also means that storage upgrades for Gmail no longer top out at 25GB. There's also a handy new visualization that shows how much of your available storage you're using and breaks it down by service for finer-grained tracking.
[b]Update[/b]: If you're a Google Apps customer your available cloud storage will also be unified, leaving you with 30GB shared between all three services.