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Google's new Photo Storage Policy - What it means?
According to Google’s blog, people upload more than 4.3 million GB of content every day across Gmail, Drive and Photos every day. Indeed this growth is exponential and will be more in the coming days since everything is going digital. Hence to offer better service to its customers, Google revised its policy change this Wednesday. The change mentioned about stopping offering free unlimited storage for high-quality photos on June 1, 2021. This change also will apply to Drive (specifically Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drawings, Forms and Jamboard files). According to the company, this will allow them to continue investing in these products for the future.
So what does it mean for the users? Any new photos or videos in high quality uploaded after the date will be counted towards the 15GB Drive cap, but if the account is inactive or exceeds the 15 GB limit for two years, Google can delete the photos after warning the users. So what should users do then? They can either pay for a recurring fee or look for an alternate way to store their data/content if they run out of space. However the good news is that any high quality photos and videos users back up before June 1 will be exempted.
With the change in policy, Google has also introduced new policies for consumer accounts too. According to this, if a user is inactive in one or more of these services for two years, Google may delete the content in the inactive product(s). Those having content over the storage limit for two years, Google may delete their content across Gmail, Drive and Photos. Before deleting the content, Google will notify the user multiple times, as per the blog. Google also recommends that to keep the account active, users must periodically visit Gmail, Drive or Photos on the web or mobile, while signed in and connected to the internet. So how to manage your account storage so it remains active? Google will help you do that. Anyone can use the free storage manager in the Google One app and on the web, and delete the unwanted files to make room for more.
But by taking away unlimited backup of high quality photos and videos, Google is burying one of its services’ biggest selling points. It indeed will put users under pressure to find alternate ways of storing their content. But if you are a Pixel owner, there is a good news for you. You can still upload high quality (not original) photos for free after June 1st. These pics won’t be counted against the cap Google mentions. But still, this isn’t as good as the unlimited storage bonus we used to get with Google account. Let’s wait and see how receptive the user community is and what alternate storage ways they find.
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