Google Photos officially charges users from 1/6

From June 1 to here, Google Photos will charge users for saving more than 15GB regardless of whether it is the original photo or a high-quality photo. The amount of photos stored in Google Photos will be counted in Google One, including the storage of Google Drive and Gmail.

Previously, Google Photos had two free backup options including High Quality (each photo equates to 12-megapixel resolution) and Original Quality (which will charge up to the free 15GB limit per account).

But with the new policy, from 1 June 2021, the High Quality mode will no longer be free.

Google Photos' billing policy applies to images uploaded to the service by users after 1 June. Images uploaded to Google Photos before June 1, 2021 are still stored normally, free of charge and will not be charged to your account's storage capacity.

Despite being limited to free storage, the 15GB level of Google Photos is still higher than other services like Apple's iCloud (5GB).

According to Google, for at least three years, 80% of users of the service did not store enough 15GB of photos. In the near future, Google will announce this change to Google Photos users.

This move by Google is supposed to motivate users to buy more storage through the Google One service. Google One is currently priced at $ 2 / month for 100GB, $ 3 / month for 200GB, $ 10 / month for 2TB, and $ 150 / month for 40TB.

Besides images, documents including Google Docs, Sheets, Slides or Forms . are also counted in the storage capacity of Google One.