Google has announced some fresh changes for its Photos service starting next year. As per the blog and emails sent to users, Google starting June 1st, 2021, will upload High-Quality photos/videos to users free storage rather than backing up them for free. Google reasoned this to keep up with the growing demand for cloud storage, which it’s now serving for free in Photos.
Google Photos Unlimited Backup to Stop Soon
For a long, Google hasn’t set any cap on the data that one can upload to its Photos app. Any user who signed for Photos (Google account) will be allowed to backup an unlimited amount of photos and videos to their Photos cloud storage. While these will be compressed while being uploaded, they remain in the same high quality.
But now, it’s about to change. Google, in its blog post, said that it’s stopping this unlimited backup from next year. It said users who choose to back up their photos and videos in High Quality (photos were taken from 16MP or above camera and videos of 1080p and higher resolution) would be uploaded to their free 15GB quota that comes when signed up.
Today we are announcing that beginning June 1, 2021, new content uploaded to Google Photos in “High Quality” (compressed) will now count toward your storage quota. This is a big change, so let me explain why:
— David Lieb ✊???????????? (@dflieb) November 11, 2020
FYI, Google gives every user 15GB of free cloud storage when they create a Google account. This can be seen in their Drive’s dashboard, of how much they’ve consumed. All the files uploaded to Google Drive and Gmail will be stored in this free 15GB cloud storage only.
Thus, from next year, i.e., June 1st, 2021, Google will be backup your High-Quality files from Photos to this storage.
This is reasoned to meet the growing demand for cloud storage, as Google mentioned that about 28 billion photos and videos are being uploaded by users every week, with over 4 trillion already uploaded.
Today, the Photos app is used by over a billion users to store their memories and retrieve them whenever they want. Google has allowed unlimited storage to upload files to this service.
Also, Google said to be bringing a new tool like Personalised estimate in Photos, which tells users when they’d be reaching their full storage capacity of free 15GB. Also, there’s a Storage management tool coming next year to let users know any disturbed and blurred photos to delete them so that they can save space.
