Google plans to discontinue one of the best perks of Google Photos. Starting on June 1st, 2021, any new “high quality” photos or videos you upload to the service will count against a shared 15GB cap that will include your Google Workspace documents, slides and spreadsheets. Once you passed that cap, you’ll need to pay for Google One storage.
All photos and documents uploaded before June 1st will not count against that 15GB cap, so you have plenty of time to decide whether to continue using Google Photos or switching to another cloud storage provider for your photos. Only photos uploaded after June 1st will begin counting against the cap.
Google already counts “original quality” photo uploads against a storage cap in Google Photos. However, taking away unlimited backup for “high quality” photos and video also takes away one of the service’s biggest selling points. It was the photo service where you just didn’t have to worry about how much storage you had.
Google said that it offers more free storage than others you get 15GB instead of the 5GB that Apple’s iCloud gives you and it also claims that 80 percent of Google Photos users won’t hit that 15GB cap for at least three years.
Google One pricing is not changing. It starts at $1.99 / month for 100GB and has tiers going through 200GB ($2.99 / month), 2TB ($9.99 / month), and all the way up to 30TB ($149.99 / month).
