New Delhi: Those who have relied only on Google Photos for storage so far, will have to look for an alternative because the company is no longer offering unlimited storage, starting June 1, 2021. This move was announced in November last year. The IT giant will officially end its unlimited free storage policy for pictures at ‘high resolution’ and ‘express resolution’ starting Monday.
What does it mean?
Basically all your new photos and videos uploaded on Google Photos will now be counted within the free 15 GB of storage that comes with every Google Account.
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This free 15GB or the additional amount of data purchased is shared between Google Drive, Gmail and Photos. The move is aimed towards making consumers pay up for its cloud storage service.
Will it affect photos in existing storage?
The company has said existing high-quality photos and videos are exempted from this change. It means photos or videos backed up in High quality before 1 June, 2021, will not count toward the user’s Google Account storage. Hence only those photos and videos uploaded before June 1, 2021 will be free and exempted from the storage limit.
How to manage storage better?
With a view to help users manage their space, Google has released some tools. There will be a personalized estimate of how long your storage may last. This estimate takes into account how frequently you back up photos, videos and other content to Google Account.
As per the estimate of Google, more than 80 per cent of users will be in apposition to store roughly three more years of memories in High quality with free 15GB of storage.
After you breach the 15GB storage capacity, you will get notified. However, Pixel phone users will be able to avail additional benefits. Owners of any of the Pixel devices can continue to upload pictures from that device and it won’t impact the storage.
How to check storage in Google Account?
For this you need to go to your Google account, and login to account storage management. This tool link can be assessed at one.google.com/storage/management. Here you will get to know what extra files can be deleted, including from Photos, Gmail and Drive.
What is the cost of Google One storage plan?
You can also opt for Google One storage, paid subscription service that will allow you to add 100GB or more storage to your account depending on what plan you choose. The basic plan starts at 100GB which is Rs 130 per month or Rs 1300 per year.