Ryan Whitwam, Android Police, quoting the Pixel 2 product page fine print on the Google Store:
Free, unlimited original-quality storage for photos and videos taken with Pixel through the end of 2020, and free, unlimited high-quality storage for photos taken with Pixel afterwards.
There’s been a lot of discussion about exactly what this means. At the very least, if you want to keep taking uncompressed, original-quality pictures past the cutoff date at the end of 2020, you’ll need to start paying for storage. What is unclear is what that means for all the original-quality photos you’ve already placed on the Google Photos servers. Will they continue to be stored for free? Will you have to pay for those, too?
To be clear, I have no issue paying for the storage. Apple, after all, charges for iCloud storage already. Just looking for clarification.
Someone at Google know the details? Please let me know and I’ll update the post.
[H/T Oliver Thomas]
UPDATE: Someone at Google reached out to clarify this issue. As fair a response as I could have hoped for. Here’s the Q&A:
- Me: If I have original-quality photos stored for free, what happens to them once the end of 2020 deadline passes? Do they get deleted? Compressed? Do they stay there but I lose access to them unless I pay for enough storage so they fit?
- Google: They remain at original quality, for free. The change is only for taken photos thereafter.
As I read this, you can take all the original-quality (non-compressed) photos you want and they will always be available, non-compressed. Once the deadline passes, you’ll have a decision to make that only impacts photos taken after the deadline. Those post-deadline pics will be limited by the tier you choose after the deadline. Make sense?
What I have a problem with is how common this is becoming. Lure people into your free service with NO mention at all of it being a trial or limited period. Then, after they’ve got thousands of photos, and have become dependent, announce that you’ll have to pay up.
The only pass I’ll give Google on this is at least, especially compared to companies like Canary, they are giving customers fair warning.
For google drive, your photos and files stay on the server but you cannot upload anythihng new until you reduce your storage to below the free limit. This also means that you can’t get new email after a grace period because they are on the same storage. I think the free tier is 2gb?
I say this with prejudice; it’s worth remembering that Google will continue to monetize their users’s content while also, it seems, the company will begin to charge certain users to store that content.
When you buy a Chromebook, you get (I think) 100 GB storage on Google Drive for three years. Seems fair to me; they’re saying that for the expected life of the product, we give you free storage. After that, if you buy another product, they’ll probably extend it.
It does indeed make sense. Now, can we find somewhere this is officially spelled out? Somewhere that makes Google accountable for the statement?