Changes to Google Drive Photo Storage
Posted: November 30, 2020
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Google announced a change last week to its policy on storage that can affect users' photo storage. Right now, photos backed up to your Google account in high quality don't count toward your storage caps, but after June 1, 2021 any new photos uploaded in high quality will. This seems to be gearing up for a push to pay for additional cloud storage with Google One. Photos won't be the only thing affected - the change will also include any new documents, spreadsheets, presentations, forms, etc. With the change being over six months away, now may be a good time to review your options for photo and document storage.
Mark Hachman, Senior Editor of PCWorld, explains the changes and how they can affect your Google storage.
On Wednesday, Google announced a major change to its policy on storing photos and other documents: All will start contributing to your overall storage cap, pushing you to eventually pay for Google’s Google One cloud storage, or risk having files deleted.
The changes won’t take place immediately. Beginning on June 1, 2021, any
new photo that you take with a smartphone not made by Google will count towards your cap, which is currently 15GB within Google’s free tier. The same is true of any
new Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drawings, Forms, or Jamboard files. Existing photos and documents, however, will not.
The change is a major one for Android smartphone users, but can affect iOS users too. Generally speaking, when you take a photo with your Android smartphone, it’s backed up to Google, as well as any other services you’ve linked to your phone, such as Box or Microsoft’s OneDrive. Likewise, iPhone users can back up their photos into Google Photos as well as iCloud.
Read the entire article,
How Google's new policy affects your free storage in Photos and Drive, on
PCWorld.