Borrowing a page from Yahoo’s (YHOO) playbook, Google (GOOG) has begun offering extra storage plans to users of Gmail and Picasa, its e-mail and photo storage services. The company says it will soon expand the storage service so that it will hold documents as well.
Users still receive 2 gigabytes of free Gmail storage and 1 gigabyte of free Picasa storage. Once they have exceeded that, Google is charging 6GB for $20 per year, 25GB for $75 per year, 100GB for $250 per year, and 250GB for $500 per year. The purchased storage can be shared among multiple Google services. Payments are processed through Google Checkout.
The expanded storage service is another small step toward diversifying Google’s revenue beyond advertising. Yahoo made similar moves at the beginning of the decade, when the online ad market slowed in the wake of the dot-com crash.