Google has launched a new cloud storage service competing directly with Amazon's S3. Google Storage for Developers offers scalable, high-bandwidth storage, with an easy-to-use RESTful API.

Google Storage will cost 17¢ per gigabyte per month, with uploads costing 10¢ per gigabyte and 15-30¢ per gigabyte for downloads. Initially, Google Storage will only be available to a limited number of US-based developers, with 100GB of storage and 300GB of bandwidth per month for no charge.

This announcement comes just a day after Amazon offered a cut-price version of S3, offering weaker reliability guarantees for a lower price. Amazon's Reduced Reliability storage offers 99.99 percent reliability for 10¢ per gigabyte, compared to S3's normal price of 15¢ per gigabyte. Amazon's pricing structure also offers discounts for heavy users.

Though Google has its AppEngine cloud computing platform, it has previously lacked a storage solution to go with it. As such, it was missing a key component for many Web applications, and represented a big drawback relative to Amazon's more comprehensive offerings. Google Storage is a step towards remedying this deficit, but it's going to be a while before the search giant's offerings will rival the maturity of the much more established—and cheaper—S3.