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If there’s one rule when it comes to computer storage, it’s that eventually everything gets a lot cheaper.  A 1 TB HDD can be bought for about $80, while a few years ago it was simply unheard of to even have 1 TB on one drive.  It stands to reason, then, that eventually online storage costs would decrease as well.  For a while that was simply not true, until Google stepped in today.

Google has announced that it will now start selling online storage for Gmail and Picasa at $5 a year for 20 GB.  The move puts twice as much storage for a quarter of what Google was offering previously.  The $20 a year plan now gives users 80 GB rather than 10 GB (users who previously purchased 10 GB should now have 80 GB).  The plans don’t stop at 80 GB.  Google is also offering 200 GB for $50 a year, and up to 16 TB for $4096 a year.

Keep in mind that for now this storage applies only to Gmail and Picasa.  Google has yet to announce the fabled “GDrive” that would act like Dropbox or Ubuntu One, though now at a much lower cost (Dropbox charges $240 a year for 100 GB, while Ubuntu One charges $120 for 50 GB).  There is the possibility, as Webmonkey points out that this could somehow impact Chrome OS by offering online storage to offset the relatively small amount of storage available on netbooks.  If Google could somehow get the storage to work with both Chrome OS and Android, it would be even better.  Sure, it’s probably a longshot, but being able to store music on Google’s servers and have it available to an Android phone, or to a Chrome OS netbook would be a great feature.  It could lead to even more people claiming Google is evil and wants to control all your data, but at least the data will be secure at Google.

Read [Webmonkey]