It's not even a smart pricing model; it's built on the assumption that the first "byte-month" costs as much and is as valuable to the end-user as the trillionth.
I never even thought about the pricing model. But you're right he isn't doing rent extraction properly. I merely saw how he presented himself with "picodollars" and thought to myself "I know this guy. He spent twenty minutes telling me about the great deal on peaches he got".[1]
Seriously, switch to $/Gig, and sell the hell out of it. I don't care how smart you are. Show me how you can make my life better/simpler then get the hell out of it.
1. True story. I've gained a good nose for these people and I just walk away after the first encounter.
There's also a mental barrier that comes up when you see something unusual. I don't think about my expenses in pico dollars and I don't think about my important data in bytes. The worst part for me is that at $0.30/GB for storage and bandwidth the cost seems so low that I really don't even care if I'm using a full GB or just 12 bytes. Charge me the $0.30 and be done with it. If I can't glance at the service and guestimate how much it would cost me I'm not going to stick around long enough to find out.
Of course, the other thing to note here is that restaurants don't put dollar signs next to prices because they don't want people sitting there thinking about how much it costs.
The word "picodollar" is basically a dollar sign with a <blink> tag around it.
