Google Services Sharing Data

In a blog post today Google announced today that the storage for GMail, Drive and Google+ (Photos) will be combined into one 15GB package instead of separate amounts for each service.

This is one more in a series of steps in integrating the services provided by Google. I haven't quite decided if it is a good move or a bad one yet as the change has both pros and cons. On one hand now you can increase the size of your GMail past the previous 25GB limit if you pay for extra storage as any additional storage is also shared by all three services. In addition it means that if you are using one and it is close to capacity you will gain extra space if you aren't using the others to their full extent. The downside is that now you have to pay attention to the amount of space your Google+ pictures take up which you didn't have to before and can be a problem if you use all three to their full capacity, though I suppose that was a problem they had before.

Unfortunately CNET's original report that they increased the size of Drive by 3 times is not 100% accurate. (Though there is a one line update at the bottom of the article acknowledging the mistake the title is still quite misleading)

But with I/O still to come who knows, maybe there will be an increase in storage right around the corner.