Google cuts Cloud Storage service prices

Google has lowered the price of its Cloud Storage service, which is aimed at enterprise developers needing application data storage in the cloud.

The monthly usage fees have dropped from between eight and 15 per cent, depending on the amount of data used and will be retroactively applied from 1 March.

The new rates brings Google into line with Amazon, which dropped its storage prices in early February. Prices for the first terabyte of data stored in Google's cloud starts from $0.12 per gigabyte per month for the first terabyte.

"Google Cloud Storage enables developers to store and access massive amounts of data on Google's infrastructure with high reliability, availability and performance," Navneet Joneja, a product manager for Google Cloud Storage, wrote in a blog post announcing the price cuts on Tuesday. "Today, we're also announcing lower storage prices to make it even more affordable to store your data in Google's cloud."

The search engine giant also announced a number of partnerships with enterprise storage companies. these companies will use Cloud Storage commercially in their products. The companies include  StorSimple, Panzura and Gladinet.

A beta version of of the service was launched in 2010 and was originally called Google Storage for Developers. Last October, Google ditched the beta label and the original name.

The service is aimed at heavy duty enterprise applications requiring storage  of huge amounts of data in the cloud.

A complete breakdown of the new prices are available on Google's Cloud Storage pricing page.