First, it doesn't "cost" Google $25 per year to offer someone 100GB of storage. That's Google's PRICE to you, the user. Google's actual COST is much, much lower than that. Moreover, most people don't use even close to 100GB, so the actual storage used on average is probably closer to 30GB, reducing the COST to Google even further. I remember reading an analysis back when Google launched Gmail about how the company could possibly afford to give each user an entire 1GB of storage (when Hotmail and the others were generally offering about 10-20 MB) and it was this shared capacity plus economies of scale that permitted it to.
Second, Google wouldn't be offering storage to every single person in the program. Per the badge descriptions page, there are 46,657 Local Guides at Level 6. If it COST Google US$1 (still probably too high) for 50GB of Drive storage per year, you're looking at US$46,657 per year, about half a low-level employee's salary at Google. And I'm quite sure those 46,657 LGs do far more work than a half-time staffer could.
Drive Storage, as indicated by @LucioV, was a promotion offered to Local Guides from 2015 through March 2017. It was last offered to Local Guides who reached Level 4 by March 17, 2017 and redeemed it within 30 days, as detailed in the announcement post.
We would request to extend the storage. I'm actively contributing high quality content to the program using high quality devices to help others. In return, this drive storage is very useful and comes handy. Extension of storage with good amount would be first thing to expect for me right now.
Need the 100 Gig of storage as a Level 8 Local Guide -- Google wants to shut offf my email
Hello! I admire & respect all that Google does. It is terrific, & a privilege, to be affiliated with such an outstanding firm. I have about 30 million views on the nearly 5,000 images I have loaded into the Maps product.
recently, my email account was supposed to be shut-off due to using more than 15 Gig -- I went on-line to find out what is happening. Google kindly raised my account limit to 100 Gig for only 14 days until this issue is resolved.
please let me know what I can do to assist in permanently raising my storage to 100 Gig.
2022
