If you were always relaxed that all your photos and videos are getting saved in your Google Photos and if you never worried about your memories getting lost somewhere because of the unlimited storage that Google Photos has been providing for the past five years - Well, sadly, this is all coming to an end. Google Photos' free unlimited storage service for high-quality photos and videos is discontinuing. As soon as your storage limit reaches the mark of 15 GB, Google will start charging service money. This action is going to be effective from 1st June 2021. Any photos that you have saved before this date will not be charged, but after 1st June 2021, as soon as your storage limit crosses the 15 GB mark, Google Photos will start charging you.
Now, Google says that they had to implement this new policy because as of today, Google Photos is a hub of almost around 4 trillion photos, and every week, around 28 billion new photos and videos are added to this hub. This shows how many people rely on Google Photos to store their memories, and this shows that it is indeed a very valuable cloud storage service. But now, Google thinks that it is important to make the service more sustainable in the long run, and to continue providing storage services to the users, Google has decided to change the policy of unlimited high-quality storage.
To some extent, it makes sense. But being ‘free of cost’ and ‘unlimited’ were some of the biggest selling points of the service. Won't the users move on to some other cloud storage service now that the main selling points are not going to be there?
Another point to notice is that this action could be a means to push the users towards the Google One subscription app which will provide better storage solutions for photos and videos, with a 100 GB cloud storage for around $1.99 per month. Google One is also going to add a free VPN for Android for some of its higher subscription packages. Most of the Google products are aligning with Google One, so perhaps this is one of the reasons for this policy change for Google Photos.
Google will start sending the users warning emails as soon as they will get near the 15 GB storage limit. For all inactive accounts or the ones that have not been touched in more than 2 years, Google will delete their content in any of the Google products, like Drive, Photos, Documents, etc.
All other products like Documents, Sheets, Drawings, etc. are also going to get a storage limit soon.
Read next: Google Maps is adding a new dedicated section for ‘Trips’ in the Timeline view
Now, Google says that they had to implement this new policy because as of today, Google Photos is a hub of almost around 4 trillion photos, and every week, around 28 billion new photos and videos are added to this hub. This shows how many people rely on Google Photos to store their memories, and this shows that it is indeed a very valuable cloud storage service. But now, Google thinks that it is important to make the service more sustainable in the long run, and to continue providing storage services to the users, Google has decided to change the policy of unlimited high-quality storage.
To some extent, it makes sense. But being ‘free of cost’ and ‘unlimited’ were some of the biggest selling points of the service. Won't the users move on to some other cloud storage service now that the main selling points are not going to be there?
Another point to notice is that this action could be a means to push the users towards the Google One subscription app which will provide better storage solutions for photos and videos, with a 100 GB cloud storage for around $1.99 per month. Google One is also going to add a free VPN for Android for some of its higher subscription packages. Most of the Google products are aligning with Google One, so perhaps this is one of the reasons for this policy change for Google Photos.
Google will start sending the users warning emails as soon as they will get near the 15 GB storage limit. For all inactive accounts or the ones that have not been touched in more than 2 years, Google will delete their content in any of the Google products, like Drive, Photos, Documents, etc.
All other products like Documents, Sheets, Drawings, etc. are also going to get a storage limit soon.
Read next: Google Maps is adding a new dedicated section for ‘Trips’ in the Timeline view
