Google on Wednesday evening announced that Google Photos will end the free unlimited storage benefit and will start charging for the storage space your photos and videos take over the 15GB quota. The change will come into effect on June 1, 2021 and is aimed to help Google convince more people to get a Google One subscription. The service brings cloud storage for Google Photos, along with Google Drive and Gmail, of up to 30TB space. 

COMMERCIAL BREAK
SCROLL TO CONTINUE READING

After the implementation of the new guidelines, any photos or videos uploaded on Google Photos after June 1 next year, will count toward the free 15GB storage limit as part of your Google Account. Google has, however, clearly mentioned in its blog post that any photos or videos you've uploaded in ‘high quality' — and not the ‘original quality' — before June 1 will not count against the 15GB cap. Thus, the change will be effective for the uploads taking place after June 1. 

What you should worry about 

Now, while the charges on storage are something that would concern the users, there is more to this announcement by Google. The tech giant has announced that it is bringing a policy to delete data from inactive accounts that have not been signed in for at least two years. This means such users can end up losing all data they had backed up in the past. 

Relief for Pixel users 

The Google Pixel owners have been exempted from the change. They will to be able to upload their photos and videos in ‘high quality' from their devices even after June 1. But unlike before, they will also not be able to access unlimited storage for their content in its original file size. 

Other users, who don't own a Pixel phone, have had a 15GB cap for uploading ‘original quality' photos and videos that did not apply to Pixel phones up until now. This means Pixel users will also have to compromise for storage space to some extent. 

The tech giant claims that these changes will not impact most users as 80 percent of its userbase “should still be able to store roughly three more years' worth of memories” using the free 15GB storage allocation. Some alerts and warnings will also be provided through the Google Photos app once a user reaches near the limit.