Posted in Undependable Support

Google doing away with free “unlimited” storage for high quality photos

A reminder that there’s no such thing as “unlimited”.

What Google giveth, Google can taketh away.

In a blog post, Google has announced that it is halting unlimited storage for High Quality photos starting June 1, 2021. Any High Quality photos uploaded after that will be subject to the free 15 GB of storage that comes with every Google account, with additional storage coming at a fee.

Uploading full-resolution images have always counted against personal storage on Google, but any images that were uploaded and subjected to Google’s compression were able to be stored without limit. From now until June of next year, that will remain the case. But after June 1, any new photos and videos uploaded will count toward the free 15 GB of storage that comes with every Google Account or the additional storage purchased as a Google One member. Google Account storage is shared across Drive, Gmail, and Photos.

If you’re looking for inexpensive photo storage (again, there’s no such thing as unlimited free storage, so don’t trust your photos to any outfit promising that), you can check out SmugMug, Flickr Pro, and Wasabi, none of which are Google-owned.