Google Photos’ unlimited storage plan for your “high-quality” photos ended on June 1, 2021.The company made the announcementthe previous November, without specifying reasons like whether it was running out of server space, or just wanted to sell you a Google One subscription for extra storage.
You might be angry that Googlekille off another super handy feature. But there are no free lunches. So what are your options? We’ll address all your questions such as exporting your data and choosing an alternative service in this article.
How much stuff have you got on Google Photos?
Before you storm out of Google’s image storing service, you need to know how much stuff you’ve stored on the service. The easiest way to do it is by heading tothis link. The photos and videos part is indicative of images and clips stored on Google Photos.
Google offers 15GB of free storage for your account across various services. You could remove unnecessary files and large emails from Drive and Gmail to free up some space.Compressed images on Google Photos take roughly 1-4 MB space each. So you can easily squeeze in more than 300 photos per GB.
Calling all Scaleup founders! Join the Soonicorn Summit on November 28 in Amsterdam.
Meet with the leaders of Picnic, Miro, Carbon Equity and more during this exclusive event dedicated to Scaleup Founders!
The company said in November 2020 that more than 80% of users wouldn’t hit the 15GB limit for another 10 years. So, if you’re one of them, you might not need to worry about moving away of the service.
Exporting your data
Here’s how you can export a backup of your Google Photos account:
It might take at least a few hours for Google to create your backup files. You’ll get an email when your files are ready to be downloaded.
Choosing an alternative service
Google’s not the only one offering photo storage services, but its unlimited photo storage plan was appealing. The only downside was that it compressed images to store them on the cloud — but the quality difference wasn’t striking for most use cases.
While Google’s 15GB limit is still substantial, here are some of the options you can choose to store your snaps and clips as alternatives:
If you don’t have thousands of high-quality photos, Google Photos is still a good choice as you’ll get a big chunk of 15GB of free storage to host your images. Alternatively, Flickr and ImageShack offer unlimited image storage if you don’t want to worry about how much you upload.
Story byIvan Mehta
Ivan covers Big Tech, India, policy, AI, security, platforms, and apps for TNW. That’s one heck of a mixed bag. He likes to say “Bleh.“Ivan covers Big Tech, India, policy, AI, security, platforms, and apps for TNW. That’s one heck of a mixed bag. He likes to say “Bleh.”
Get the TNW newsletter
Get the most important tech news in your inbox each week.
