Probably one of the most popular Google apps is Google Photos, especially for those who take a lot of photos on their mobile devices. You get unlimited cloud storage if you choose to upload it in the High-Quality compressed version and not the original quality images. But that will soon come to an end, at least until mid next year. Google has announced that by June 1, 2021, all the photos and videos you upload will count against your entire Google storage.
Currently, there are two settings for uploading your photos and videos on Google Photos. If you want the original quality version, it will be counted against your current Google storage. But if you want unlimited storage, you will have to choose the High-Quality setting which compresses the items. If you don’t plan to have them printed out in a larger format and you just want a place to store your images, then the latter is already a pretty good deal.
Well, now you can enjoy it while it lasts. By June 1, 2021, Google says that even your High-Quality uploads will already be counted as part of your account quota. They said this is part of “preserving the future of the service”. Basically, if you want more space, you’ll have to subscribe to one of their Google One plans which starts at $1.99 per month for 100GB. If you don’t want to subscribe, you’ll have to make do with the 15GB free storage that you get across all Google apps.
This new development has of course been met with criticism as people have gotten used to storing their various photos and videos for free on Google Photos. They will be launching a new tool that will help you filter out photos that you may not want to save to your account, like those that are dark or blurry. Hopefully, the tool will be useful and convenient to use as one of the advantages of Photos is that it’s almost hassle-free for your photo backup needs.
This change will only be applicable for photos that you will be uploading starting June 1, 2021. It will not affect all the photos that you’ve uploaded before then. It still sucks of course but this is the “price” we have to pay to keep the service going.
