Google Photos’ free cloud storage days will end on June 1, when the technology giant announced its plans to charge users for its storage service.
Google Photos currently offers all its users unlimited storage to save all their memories on the cloud. On June 1, however, users only receive 15GB of free cloud storage, so they’ll pay for Google Photos beyond the cap.
Charges Google Photos
Google’s subscription to the Google One photos will charge $1.99 (Rs 146 at current rates) a month to store new photos in cloud storage when you exhaust the 15GB free limit. The annual subscription is also available at $19.99 per year (Rs 1464 at current rates).
The fees apply only to new photos and videos, so that all your old photos and videos stored on your account are secure. The 15GB cap will be applied to all the media content you store starting June 1.
In November 2020, Google announced that it would no longer provide unlimited free storage of “high-quality” images on photos from 1 June 2021.
My Rules My Google Pixel
Google Pixel 2 or later owners will probably still have unlimited free high quality photo backups on Google Photos. It is likely that pixels 2, 3, 4 and 5 owners benefit from the free photo storage offer.
This change also allows us to keep pace with the increasing storage demand, “said Google Photos VP Shimrit Ben-Yair in the original announcement. “And, as always, we maintain our commitment not to use Google Photos information for publicity purposes. We know that it is an enormous shift and we may come as a surprise, so we wanted to inform you well in advance and to make it easier for you. “
If you already have more than 15 GB of “high quality” photographs stored on Google Photos (i.e. compressed images weighing at or less than 16 MB), don’t worry: that data will no longer be counted for free storage after this upcoming change.
In addition, anything uploaded before June 1st will also be grandfathered, so now is the time to upload Google Photos to your heart’s content without having to dent your quota or wallet as your free backup.
The Verge notes that pixel smartphone owners with unlimited photo storage of unlimited quality with Google will also be impacted — photos uploaded from those phones after 1 June will only be stored free of charge in “high quality” rather than full.
