Google Photos has announced a change to its storage policy. The company says it will no longer offer unlimited free photo storage, a change that will impact storage for other Google products including email.
Google’s photo storage commenced operations in 2015 with promises of unlimited uploads to users. Five years down the line, the company is taking a swerve from that promise with a new policy that it will limit that to the same 15GB of storage per account that is shared by its popular apps like Gmail and Google Drive.
Users who wish to store more than that size will have to pay for one of the company’s storage plans.
The implication for a lot of users is that those who continue to upload photos will run out of space for emails faster.
However, photos uploaded before June 2021, when the change happens, will not count towards users’ limits.
A lot of displeased users have taken to social to accuse Google of using the free photo storage as a ploy to acquire market share from other firms while losing money.
Don MacAskill, chief executive of photo-sharing site Flickr and its owner Smug Mug, tweeted: “For five years, we’ve known this would happen eventually… Losing billions of dollars to scoop up market share, stifle the competition, then eventually charging money for it? Monopolistic behavior.”
He added that he was not surprised Google had acted now since the US Department of Justice had recently filed anti-trust charges against the firm.
The latest announcement coincides with 165 of Google’s critics writing to the European Union, asking the bloc to take a tougher stance against what they say are unfair practices by the tech giant.
The company also explained that though it has experienced growth, going forward this growth looks unstainable.
In 2015 when Google launched the photo services, it said, “When we say a lifetime of memories, we really mean it.
“With Google Photos, you can now back up and store unlimited high-quality photos and videos for free.”
But in a blog on Wednesday, it said that policy had led to four trillion photos being stored on the service, with 28 billion photos and videos being uploaded every week.
It said the change was needed to make sure the product “continues to meet your needs over the long haul”.
Google says its free 15GB of storage that comes with every account is enough to last most users “several years” across Gmail, Drive, and Photos.
It says that once the change comes in, more than 80% of users will be able to store roughly three years of photos before hitting the limit.
More storage is available through its Google One plans for a price, which in the UK costs £7.99 per month for two terabytes (2,000GB).
