Launched in 2015, Google Photos has been providing unlimited “high quality” photo and video backups for free. However, Google is updating its Google Photos’ policy effective as of mid-Q2 2021.
Starting 1 June 2021, any new photos and videos you upload will count toward the free 15 GB of storage that comes with every Google Account or the additional storage you’ve purchased as a Google One member. And your Google Account storage is shared across Drive, Gmail, and Photos. Google believes the update to allow them to keep pace with the growing demand for storage.
Google Photos, as of now, serves storage to above 4 trillion photos with 28 million new photos and videos being uploaded every week.
On the other hand, Pixel users will continue to get unlimited “high quality” photo backups for free after 1 June as well.
Again, no uploads prior to the given date are subjected to the 15GB storage limit, so you can upload as many photos as you want before it applies and still access it after the given date.
But there’s a catch. Google accounts that are inactive for 24 months will lose all their data with Google applying the same rule for accounts that exceed the storage limit for 24 months.
As for Google One, the cost for 100GB, 200GB, and 2TB data are $1.99 per month, $2.99 per month, and $9.99 per month respectively.
Google has pledged to keep its users notified several times via Gmail and Google Photos itself prior to the actual update.
