Google Photos has offered unlimited free photo and video backups at ‘high quality’ ever since it launched in 2015. But as Google announced today, starting next summer that will all change.
Google is ending its free ‘high quality’ uploads
The new Google Photos policy comes into effect June 1, 2021. All backups after that date count towards the 15GB of free Google One storage that customers are offered, regardless of the upload quality.Google hasn’t given a specific reason for the change, but it likely has something to do with wanting more customers to sign up to Google One and the costs associated with running a free service like Google Photos.
As revealed in the blog post, there are more than 4 trillion photos stored in Google Photos right now and every week an additional 28 billion photos and videos are uploaded to the service.
There is on exception to this new rule, however – Pixel owners. Google has confirmed that Pixel users will continue to benefit from unlimited free photo backups at ‘high quality’ beyond June 1, 2021.
What about existing photo and video uploads?
As for what happens to photos and videos that have already been uploaded, it turns out those are all safe. Anything uploaded before the deadline won’t count towards the 15GB of free storage.
However, do make sure to remain active on your account. Google has revealed that it may start deleting data from Google accounts that haven’t been touched in 24 months. The same rule applies if you’re over your storage limit for 24 months.
The company has promised to notify users “multiple times” before moving forward with this.
Google One starts at $1.99/month for 100GB of data, although $2.99/month will open up access to 200GB and $9.99/month gives you 2TB.
