People who purchase a Chromebook before Dec. 31 could be getting free storage on Google Drive for the next two years. Google announced that customers purchasing Chromebooks from select retailers, online outlets and Google Play will be eligible for the deal.
Writing on the official Google Drive Blog, Group Product Manager and Holiday Sock Collector Alex Vogenthaler explains:
“Chromebooks make day-to-day computing fast, simple and secure, whether you’re searching for a great pumpkin pie recipe or sharing a family photo from Google Drive. And now, as a bonus for the holiday season, new Chromebook buyers can get 1TB of Google Drive storage for two years — almost $240 in value — absolutely free.”
In the post, Vogenthaler also shares some perspective about how the Drive space could be used:
“That’s enough space to keep more than 100,000 awkward holiday sweater pics safe and shareable in Drive. With that much free storage, you can use your Chromebook for work, play and pretty much everything else you’ll do this holiday season.”
There are a host of companies that have manufactured their own Chromebooks, including Acer, Samsung, HP, and ASUS.
The deal for free Drive storage was previously only offered to people who purchased the high-end Chromebook Pixel. Google says the free cloud storage offer is in time for the holiday shopping season. And the company is clearly hoping the offer will be yet another incentive for those making decisions about their computer needs.
But Google has also been pushing hard of late to promote its various cloud-based services too.
Earlier this year, the company introduced “Google For Work“, a newer version of its popular enterprise cloud solution. The service is free to try for 30 days. After that, users who want to continue using the service must pay either $5 per month (for 30GB of cloud storage in Google Drive) or $10 per month (unlimited storage) per user.
Since Chromebooks aren’t known for local storage capacity, Google often adds 100 GB of Drive storage free with a purchase, reports 9to5Google.
Recent research suggests Chromebooks will continue to increase in popularity with business users as more and more businesses adopt cloud services.
Image: Google
I guess it is their way to get users to switch to Chromebook. Google is really having its share in the gadget arena.