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That's Google now introducing an upper limit on free photo storage, even in the "High Quality" mode that was previously unlimited.
Starts June 2021.
You got a link. Sorry too lazy to Google.
Bastards. Think I'll look into amazon photos, as I pay for it anyway.
Ta
Google link https://support.google.com/photos/answer/10100180?hl=en&p=storagepolicy
glad I bought a Pixel
The limit is 15gb though, that's a lot of photos (and, lets be honest, more than you'll ever look at)
Google are starting to really clamp down on storage across their products.
I'm a product manager for a global telco and am responsible for the Microsoft and Google cloud products - so when they killed G Suite recently and replaced it with Workplace I has quite the 'WTF?' moment.
Reason being is that there appears to be no other reason than to copy Microsoft's Office product in terms of product feature laddering and pricing, but also they removed the unlimited storage in Drive that was available in G Suite Business.
That was one of the major selling points (as it was easy to explain to a customer as a salesperson) and meant customers didn't have to worry about storage limits.
They've ripped that out of the new Workspace Business SKUs and replaced it with 30GB, 2TB and 5TB respectively (IIRC). Some Workspace Enterprise SKUs retain unlimited storage, but you pay for the pleasure.
This and the Google Photos annoucnement smacks of someone in the finance organisation in Google realising that this (free storage) isn't sustainable as a revenue model and they're prepared to take the heat and remove it in order to start realising some revenue. Most hyperscalers are realising this as they realise that spiralling costs of cloud datacentres mean they need to limit things.
They'll be fine, but it is an arse.
Between this and the move from Play Music to Youtube Music I'm feeling a bit narked.
Why are people getting so upset about having to pay for something? You have had years of free use and now that has come to an end. Why do think Google should give you free storage for your thousands of random snaps of pointless stuff?
Free Member
Why are people getting so upset about having to pay for something?
Oh teh ironing
Oh teh ironing
sorry, im not seeing the ironing on this one. Please explain.
You have had years of free use and now that has come to an end.
Its called "bait and switch" and it a morally questionable, but successful, sales tool.
sorry, im not seeing the ironing on this one. Please explain.
And I can't see anyone getting "so upset".
Its called “bait and switch” and it a morally questionable, but successful, sales tool.
But nothing is stopping people from taking their business elsewhere..... oh wait..... they would have to start paying for the service then.
And I can’t see anyone getting “so upset”.
how about
Bastards. Think I’ll look into amazon photos
or
Between this and the move from Play Music to Youtube Music I’m feeling a bit narked.
not the height of upsetness i grant you.. but you know
Why are people getting so upset about having to pay for something?
I'd kind of accepted that Google were profiling all my metadata in return for cool free stuff. However after getting me settled in their eco-system, they're now changing the arrangement to one where they can charge me for cool stuff AS WELL AS profile all my metadata.
So I either accept being profiled and pay them money, or look elsewhere.
not the height of upsetness i grant you.. but you know
My narked-ness is due to the fact that it's now a faff that I have to deal with, rather than something that just works in the background and I can ignore.
As I've got more important things to do with my free time (At least I think I do) I'll probably grumble and accept it, and Google know that. Not a pleasant way to do business, but probably fairly effective at getting a short term profit boost (Google, renowned for being low on profits). However it means I'll think twice about signing up to new Google services so, if enough people think like me, it could potentially hit them in the longer term.
At £2 a month the first charging tier is hardly expensive.
The writing is on the wall.
We have enjoyed years of 'free' photos and ability to download our own music, store files, blog, and much, much more.
Looks like it is a charging model going forward.
The decision now is, who offers what I need and reasonable cost going forward?
At £2 a month the first charging tier is hardly expensive.
So they lured me in with free.
Then once it became a faff to leave it changes to £2 a month.
How long before it's £10+ a month? Presumably, that's how this model works.
The decision now is, who offers what I need and reasonable cost going forward?
Not really. It's more a decision of do I need anything beyond the free option". None of this comes for free in either monetary or environmental terms. Storing zettabytes of pointless data isn't any better for the world than individually wrapping apples in polystyrene but so long as its free people (me included) will continue to do more and more of it.
If a payment model makes people consider it they need to keep 3 copies of all 500 selfies they took in that bar last night it's a good thing.
How many photos does 15gb equate to?
How many photos does 15gb equate to?
Depends what quality you store. Lots.
If you are already a user Google can estimated how long it will take you to exceed 15GB based on your upload history. For me, that's another 2 years worth of unregulated uploading. In reality I'll probably switch Auto-Upload off and be a bit more choosy.
I have a 100GB Google drive account. It currently has (amongst other docs, back ups, videos and what not) every photo I have taken with my phone(s) since 2014 backed up automatically and can be keyword searched.
I'm currently using all of 29.8GB. Pretty sure it'll be alright for a bit.
It costs me £1.59 per month.
I was a bit peeved when I read that email this morning. Peeved for about 15 mins, before I saw the cheap price for 100GB of storage that I could invite family members too. I do use my Drive for a bit of shared data too, so was already upto 11.5GB and their prediction was I would be out of space in 8mths.
100GB for £18/year sounds reasonable to me
Just delved into my settings and discovered I've used 0.25gb so far. That's every photo and video dating back to sept 2011, auto backed up in "high quality." There's a right load of sh't in there.
Just delved into my settings and discovered I’ve used 0.25gb so far. That’s every photo and video dating back to sept 2011, auto backed up in “high quality.” There’s a right load of sh’t in there.
That sounds like all those photos aren't actually using up any space.
go to https://photos.google.com/storage and you'll the space your photos/drive/gmail are using. For me it's 6.5GB in Drive and Gmail and 0 in photos because high quality photos don't currently count towards your usage. But, they will soon (all future photos).
I've had my current phone for nearly 2 years and I have under 10GB of photos and videos, in their original quality. I'll probably be OK for a while, and even then, there's 100GB for £1.59 a month.
I pay about £1.50 a month to Google for photo storage.
Almost every single photo I have taken on a digital camera or mobile phone is there from about 2003 until now. Plus lots of older photos from late 90s uploaded from CDs which I always bought whenever I had a film developed.
They are magically indexed by Google so that i can search them by date, content of photo, who is in the photo, and location for more recent ones. It just works. I can see them on my phone, across work and personal laptop or TV. I can share them easily.
I took the time to put them all on my Google account a couple of years ago, before this I was juggling different CDs, DVDs and hard drives. Even tried a few early cloud type things. Probably spending £100s every few years on a newer, bigger HDD for the expanding collection. Worried about backups and syncs, and what would happen if the whole lot was stolen, lost in a fire or just stopped working one day.
I'm happier to trust that to Google for a few pounds a year. I think that it represents good value.
All my important stuff is saved on Drive. The thing with Google photos is I've always intended to tidy it up but it would take thousands of hours, even in furlough I could never be arsed with that massive housekeeping. Its got hundreds of accidental shots, pocket shots, thousands of baby photos (some of them my own :))
I'm another who has been flipped to YouTube Music. That's quite good now I'm persevering with it but it was an arse to start with.
On the Photos thing I've now got OneDrive picking those up from Android and as I'm paying for a sub for O365 I've got my storage covered that way.
I think if you're smart and shop about a bit for other backup platforms then you might just manage to cut Google out of the loop on the photos/documents and at least then you're not giving them your meta data for free while paying for an extra service. I grant that you may be paying someone else to do the same but maybe you're already paying for that anyway (like me and OneDrive).
Kinda knew this would happen one day so I bought a lifetime cloud storage for £300 - 2 terabyte. But I’ve still got loads of spare g’s left on google photos.
I'm paying for 100gb and currently have 45gb of photos and videos (some of the older stuff will be original quality I think, before they brought in the high quality thing. I've also about 50gb of other files in Drive. So at the moment I'm getting warnings as I have less than 5gb left.
But...
I bought a Pixel 3a last year. Does that mean my high quality stuff shouldn't be counting towards my 100gb of drive? Anyone know how I can tell as it doesn't seem to be immediately obvious.
Isn't it only stuff taken on the pixel that is 'free'. No idea how long it stays free though if you switch to a different handset
Upset? Christ! 😆😆😆
Upset is that before or after tutting on the annoyance scale?
Depends what scale you use, us freeloaders aren't allowed to tutt as loudly.
go to https://photos.google.com/storage and you’ll the space your photos/drive/gmail are using. For me it’s 6.5GB in Drive and Gmail and 0 in photos because high quality photos don’t currently count towards your usage. But, they will soon (all future photos).
never use 'drive' (AFAIK) and never really understood syncing. thought id look at that link. it said.....
photos and videos (2.4Gb)
drive and gmail (10.9 Gb) 13.3Gb of 18Gb used.
about 1 year of storage left.
so, i thought id slowly start deleting all the shite photos, see if i could create me some more space. deleted 100s from the last 2 years for starters. now its.....
photos and videos (2,4Gb) so no change
drive and gmail (11.7Gb) so actually up 0.8Gb!! how?? whats happening?
oh and ive now only got 'about 7 months of storage left'.
i kept refreshing the page and watched the storage going up each time by 0.1Gb. what the bluddy hells happening?
my 'drive and gmail' has now crept up to 12Gb from 10.9 in my last post 2 days ago. i now have only 3.6Gb left and the rate its disappearing ill be gobbled by the pacman any time now :-/
any idea whats happening? im not saving anything on purpose, in fact i deleted a load of photos but still it creeps up.
help?