I used to be a big fan of Google. Everything they provided was free. They used their Ad money from Google Search to provide us free solutions like Google Maps, Google Drive, and one of my favorite unlimited photo storage for Google Photos.
A couple of weeks back, Google dropped its unlimited Google Drive storage for Gsuite users.
And Google will be dropping the unlimited storage option for Google Photos, starting from June 1st, 2021.
In an email received by the Google photos team, they say Google Photos is home to more than 4 trillion photos and videos, and around 4 billion photos and videos are uploaded everyday.
And starting from June 1 st 2021, photos and videos you upload to Google Photos will count from the storage provided by Google (Google provides 15GB of free storage across all of their platforms except for YouTube videos). Where up until now, photos and videos uploaded to Google Photos in high-quality did not count from your Google Storage.
If you look from the business point of view, managing 4 trillion photos and videos and managing 4 billion new uploads every day for free is not a viable option. And it might be costing Google a large amount of money to provide the service for free.
However, photos and videos uploaded in high quality before June 1st, 2021 will not count from your Google storage.
“We don’t take this decision lightly and we acknowledge that this is a big shift, so wanted to let you know well in advance and give you resources to help you navigate this change.”
Google photos
In Google Photos, you have the option to upload the photos in their original quality where it will cost from your available Google storage. However, if you uploaded the photos in “high quality” it was free and Google said it was providing unlimited storage.
More than one billion users are using Google Photos, especially if you have an iPhone, then the Google Photos app on your iPhone can help you to keep your photos backed up, and while you don’t have to worry about your iPhone’s storage.
Google has provided you with this tool that will give you an estimate on when you will reach your storage capacity. Go to https://photos.google.com/storage and see when you will reach your storage capacity.
Another bait and switch?
While some users can argue that this is a classic “bait and switch model” used by many software products.
Where they initially offer a free solution to get enough users, and once they achieve a certain number of users or gather enough network effect, slowly drop the free solution and funnel everyone to a paid solution.
It will not be the first time Google has followed this “bait and switch” approach.
Google says it will allow a tool to make sure you only upload the photos that you need and avoid uploading unwanted or low-quality photos. And may use this opportunity to funnel users to Google One to buy more storage.
“On June 1, 2021, we will be launching a new storage management tool which will help you easily find and delete dark, blurry, and otherwise unwanted content. You can also purchase more storage with Google One where available.”
Google photos
A popular belief is that just like Google is using their street view photos in ReCaptcha to train their artificial intelligence, Google used the photos in Google Photos to their artificial intelligence systems. And it might be that Google has enough data now in Google Photos or their AI training is now adequate.
What are the alternatives to Google Photos?
The 15GB storage provided by Google is still enough for many users and better than most of the other storage providers. For example, Apple gives only 5GB of free iCloud storage, and Dropbox is giving only 2GB of free storage.
You can purchase Google One storage plans starting at 100GB, and you can purchase up to 2TB of storage.
If you are an Apple user, you can purchase 50GB for $1 per month, to 2TB for $10 per month.
You can still upload your photos to Facebook for free, it is not providing automatic backup features like Google Photos.
Personally, Google Photos has been my favorite Google product to keep my photos backed up for free. It’s sad to see them pulling the plug on the free service. However, it’s understandable from a business point of view for them to give up providing free storage. Because if Google can’t, I’m not sure anyone else can provide such a service for free.
