Google has just announced a big change for Google Photos storage. The company will stop offering free unlimited storage on Google Photos for your “high quality” photos starting next year.
Starting June 1, 2021, Google Photos will limit free storage to the complementary 15GB that comes with every Google account. If you want more storage, you will have to purchase Google One subscription that starts at $1.99 per month ($19.99 per year) for 100GB.
The only relief is that Google won’t count any of the photos upload before June 1, 2021, against your storage quota. Google also claims that roughly 80 percent of users won’t hit their 15GB cap in three years after the new change goes live.
If you own a Pixel 2 or later, you will still get unlimited free high-quality photo backups. This could be another reason to buy a Google Phone next time.
Google will also release a new tool that will help users manage their Photos and see what they could delete to free some space. This tool will identify photos that aren’t good, large videos, and blurry photos. Once a user reaches the cap, Google Photos will send a warning to buy the subscription.
After using your photos to train its machine learning models, now Google is ready to monetize Photos. The company recently released a monthly printing service and even added some editing features behind a paywall.
