Thinking About Google Photos (Premium)

Last week, Google announced that it was discontinuing free, unlimited photo storage in its Google Photos service, enraging fans. I get it, sort of: No one can dispute that Google has a reputation for discontinuing services and that that history plays a role in the outrage. But for this Google Photos customer and fan, nothing has changed: I was already paying for Google Photos and I will continue to do so. And if photos matter at all to you, I recommend you do the same.

As Google’s David Lieb explained on Twitter, Google Photos has over 1 billion users and they upload an astonishing 28 billion photos to the service every week. The service currently stores over 4 trillion photos. His assessment of Google Photos is both correct and poignant: The service isn’t just cloud storage, it’s “the home of our life’s memories, the place we go when we’re feeling nostalgic. It’s the closest many of us have to a record of our lives.”

As much sense as that makes, I know that many Google Photos users feel that the online giant has played a game of bait and switch with them: After getting them hooked on Google Photos, they’re yanking the proverbial rug out from under them and making them pay for a service that, to date, has been free.

But that’s not exactly true.

Google isn’t switching off the ability to upload an unlimited number of photos to Google Photos—using the “high quality” settings—for free until June 2021. That means that users can today upload literally any number of photos to the service, for free, and never need to worry about that again. All “high quality photos and videos you back up before June 1 are exempted” from the new storage restrictions. So pile it on while you still have time.

What’s changing is that starting on June 1, 2021, Google will begin holding all high quality photos (and videos) stored in Google Photos against a 15 GB storage allotment that is shared across  Google Drive (Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drawings, Forms, or Jamboard), Gmail, and Google Photos. (Original quality photos have always been held against this allotment.)

Most Google customers will upgrade their storage through a service called Google One. Here, you can pay $1.99 per month (about $24 per year) for 100 GB of storage or $2.99 per month (about $36 per year) for 200 GB of storage, and those who opt for that latter option also get 3 percent back in Store credit on Google Store purchases. There’s also a 2 TB option that costs $9.99 per month ($120 per year), and those customers get 10 percent back in the Google Store plus access to a Google VPN service on Android.

Folks, those are reasonable prices.

I have uploaded my entire lifetime of photos, in original quality on phones and including all of the pre-digital photos I’ve scanned, to Google Photos and I’m currently using 127 GB of storage. (Because my account is a G Suite commercial account, I don’t have access to Google One, so my cheapest option is to pay for 1 TB of storage through G Suite.) So my real-world cost for storing a literal lifetime of memories would be a paltry $36 per year were I using Google One like a normal person. I will happily pay this fee for the rest of my life if possible.

While many are debating which service to switch to, I will continue to argue that you should instead be uploading your personal photos and videos to multiple services. I use Google Photos (1 TB through G Suite) and Microsoft OneDrive (1 TB through Microsoft 365 Home), but if you’re an Amazon Prime customer, you get free, unlimited, full-resolution photo storage and 5 GB of video storage for as long as you’re a subscriber. Instead of dumping Google Photos, you should consider using a second service alongside it. (I also back up photos locally to a NAS by the way.)

Of course, there is another factor to user outrage over Google Photos: Customers who went all-in on Google and also purchased Pixel handsets have benefited from the free uploading of original quality photos and videos, and Google is taking that away too: Future Pixel handsets will no longer offer free photo uploads in original quality.

Now, to be fair, the Pixel benefit has been decreasing over the years anyway. Only the first-generation Pixels, which are no longer supported, offered “unlimited free storage at Original quality” on Google Photos. The Pixel 2 and 3 families supported unlimited free storage at original quality for four years. And then starting with the Pixel 3a, the perk disappeared for good. The Pixel 3a, 4, 4 XL, 4a, 4a (5G), and 5 already don’t offer unlimited free storage at original quality.

But there is one important change: Those newer Pixels do today all offer unlimited free storage at high quality. And that perk is going away, starting June 1, 2021. For everyone, Pixel and non-Pixel users alike.

Anyway, it’s always tough when something free disappears. But in this case, I think it’s warranted and not unexpected. And we should give Google some credit for giving us over 6 months to pack as much content as we want into Google Photos. If you’ve not yet uploaded your entire photo library, this is the time to do so.