Google Photos ends free unlimited storage

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The company will phase out unlimited storage on Google Photos, it said on Wednesday. The service, launched in 2015, makes it easy for users to download, save, and sort the thousands of images we fill our smartphones with.

Any images that users upload after June 1, 2021 will count towards the 15 GB limit imposed on Google Accounts that already include files from other services such as Gmail and Google Drive.

Once that limit is reached, Google Photos users will have to pay for additional space through the company’s Google One cloud service, which starts at $ 1.99 per month for 100GB of storage.

But the flood of users who have flocked to Google Photos in the five years since its launch – over a billion of them – may have reason to feel betrayed after relying on a feature that, at less, implied that Google would be there forever.
“Google Photos gives you a unique and private place to store a lifetime of memories and access them from any device,” said Anil Sabharwal, then head of Google Photos, in a blog post when the service launched in 2015. “And when we say a lifetime of memories, we really mean it.”

Google Photos won over users with the offer of unlimited high-quality photo downloads and nifty automatic backups from your smartphone. Once your photos have been uploaded, Google’s artificial intelligence capabilities make it much easier to find your old photos, including grouping them by event, date, or even identifying individual people and places.

People got used to the free and very good service, so after the Google announcements on Wednesday, a lot of people are assignment sarcastic, disappointed or even angry comments on social networks.
“Google Photos: Photos. Until Google didn’t want them anymore,” wrote a user on a YouTube promotion touting Google Photos as “For Life.”
Several Twitter users also accused the company of a “bait and switch», And many have promised to stop using Google Photos.

Google did not immediately respond to a request for further comment.

A few caveats

There are some details of the upcoming change that should be noted.

Previously, Google allowed users to download high-quality images for free – slightly compressed compared to the original but barely noticeable to the casual eye. Downloading original quality images already counted towards the 15 GB storage limit. But after June 1 of next year, any images users put on Google Photos will eat away at that limit.

Certain measures have been put in place to facilitate the transition. Google says anything uploaded to Google Photos by next June won’t count towards the 15GB cap, and the company estimates that more than 80% of users will have enough space to store about three more years. images and videos, even after June. next year.

Google will also let you track your remaining space in years rather than GB, based on a calculation of how often you take and save images. Google Photos also uses artificial intelligence to warn you when you’re running out of space and suggest photos that might be easy to delete, such as random screenshots, blurry images, and anything else already saved to the cloud. .

Google claims that users of its Pixel smartphones will benefit from free unlimited storage even after the June 2021 deadline.

You have options

To some, Google’s decision to suddenly get more users to pay for storage may seem like the perfect example of a tech company that is too big and too powerful.

After all, the tech giant is already facing a major antitrust lawsuit for its dominance in online search, and its switch to Google Photos juice for even more revenue could give some of the company’s many critics more fodder to justify repression.

But unlike its dominance in online search, Google has several top competitors when it comes to photo storage and cloud services.

These include Apple’s iCloud, which offers 5 GB of free storage and $ 0.99 per month for 50 GB of storage thereafter, Microsoft’s OneDrive, which offers users 100 GB of storage for $ 1.99 per month. months, and Flickr, which offers up to 1,000 photos and videos for free and costs $ 6.99 per month for unlimited storage.

Infuriating as it may sound to some, the change is unlikely to exacerbate scrutiny of its market power.

“I think it’s too much to call this an antitrust problem,” said Avery Gardiner, general counsel and senior researcher for competition, data and power at the Center for Democracy and Technology. “And giving people more than six months’ notice of a future price increase is not the kind of behavior we usually call abuse of power.

Gardiner also points out that Google does not prevent users from switching to other services or impose restrictions on compatibility between different services.

But for users who have years of images and videos on Google Photos – the company says more than 4 trillion images are currently stored on the platform, with 28 billion added each week – it can be difficult to move away from it. Some good things just weren’t meant to last.



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