Cloud

As of June 1, 2021 Google will no longer offer a free plan for their coveted Google Photos — part of the seemingly infinite googolplex (a real number meaning 1 followed by 10¹⁰⁰ zeroes) that Alphabet, Google’s parent company, offers. With the demise of this complimentary photo backup software what do you need to know right now?

 

Simply put, it is cloud storage for all your photos and videos. With apps on both Apple and Android, it’s an easy-win for anyone with a Google account (read: Gmail email address). After a quick setup, the app will automatically upload and save your photos to the cloud, organize them by details like people and location, and even sort through and archive non-personal photos (like receipts, screenshots, and more).

 

Google offers a free plan to anyone with a Gmail address that includes 15GB of space on Google Drive and Google One (Google’s cloud). If you’ve uploaded photos before June 1, your media is safely backed up and won’t be counted against the allotment. After this date any uploaded photos and videos will be counted against your total Google Drive capacity. 

 

Google and experts estimate that it will take roughly 3 years for the average user to fill up their Google Drive. However, if you use Google Drive to store other files, as I do, you may run out a lot sooner. (Google’s tool estimates I have 1 year until I will likely hit my storage limit.)

 

Google One does offer flexible storage extension plans that allow you to upgrade and get more space. As of publishing this, expanding to 100GB (roughly 25,000 photos) is only $1.99/month (fairly comparable to what Apple’s iCloud charges for their storage option).

 

Simply use the Google One account storage management tool. You’ll see which items are taking up the most space and you can delete photos in bulk.