Google Photos is closing the cloud storage service for an unlimited number of high-quality photos and videos. This was announced by Google last night in a letter that fell to my email. This means that now access to cloud storage will be limited. Not to say that this news was unexpected, but, whatever one may say, there is little pleasure in it. Let’s figure out when the changes will take effect, what to do with old photos if they exceed the established limit, and whether there are full-fledged alternatives to Google Photos on the market.
Disabling unlimited storage in “Google Photos”, as follows from the letter to Google, will occur on June 1, 2021. The company understands that this is a serious change, so they warned users in advance. Despite the fact that until the entry into force of the new rules, there are a whole six months left, in fact, this does not change much, because now we are all losing a cool service, where it was possible to upload all photos and videos in high quality without restrictions. But, on the other hand, even in this ointment you can find a spoonful of honey.
What you need to know about closing unlimited storage in Google Photos:
- Google Photos is growing too fast and Google can’t keep up with the influx of data that users upload to the cloud. It now stores over 4 trillion photos and videos, and 28 billion new ones are uploaded every week.
- Now the maximum amount of free storage in Google Photos will be 15 GB. But since this is the same 15 GB that Google Drive provides, then keep in mind that all the services of the search giant rely on them. This means, most likely, the actual volume that will be available to you in the cloud will be less.
- The law has no retroactive effect, and therefore the new rule will apply only to new photos and videos. Therefore, all content uploaded to Google Photos prior to June 1, 2021 will not count towards the total 15 GB limit. For everything else, you will need to purchase a paid subscription to Google One.
- Since Google Photos won’t take into account old photos and videos, you don’t have to clean up your storage. However, when the changes to the limit take effect, the service will send you notifications if the memory is close to exhaustion.
- Google has prepared a special tool that predicts when your storage in Google Photos will run out. It takes into account how intensively you upload photos and videos to the cloud, and generates an approximate forecast. In my case, 15 GB is enough for about 2 years.
Google Photos alternatives
Despite the fact that the service for storing unlimited volumes of photos and videos in the cloud, which was offered by Google, was in many ways unique, even in the Russian market, Google Photos has alternatives. However, Yandex. The disk is considered the best. Obviously, the audience of the cloud service of the domestic search engine is not as wide as that of Google, so in the next few years, most likely, you can not be afraid that Yandex will introduce similar restrictions.
How to enable unlimited photos in Yandex.Disk
- Download the “Disk” application from the App Store ;
- Go through authorization or register;
New restrictions on Google Photos
- At the first start or in the settings, enable “Startup”;
- Choose on which network to upload photos and videos.
In the case of Yandex.Disk, the restrictions are slightly more than those of Google Photos. The Yandex service offers unlimited storage only for those photos that were automatically uploaded to the cloud, but for videos there is no such service at all (only in a paid plan). And the content that you manually sketch into Disk will consume the available limit. Consider this.
