Google announced that you can now purchase more storage for Gmail and PicasaWeb. The rates are better than what we usually see from Box.net and the likes - 6gb for $20 a year, 25gb for $75 a year, and up. Still, you are limited in how you use the storage, as it is only available (at this time) to those two products. I would expect that simple file storage would at least range across ALL of the google products, such as Google Page Creator, where files can be stored for use in a website build. I often host html files via GPC since there are no restrictions on access. Why isn't Google opening up the purchased storage to anything we want to do with it, and access it any way we like? Sharing via DivShare, embedded media folders via Box.net, this offering fall short.
