Many cloud solutions have been scaling things back over the years as things become a little overpopulated with users (and their data). Some of the largest companies used promises of “unlimited storage” to draw users in. However, this has been coming to the end everywhere. Either because these companies feel the claim has served enough of a purpose, or they grossly underestimated their resources and abilities to host that promise over time. Google is the next move on the board with Google Photos.
Microsoft was one of the first to start scaling back in 2015, with the departure from the unlimited storage promise for the OneDrive platform. One of the more recent players was Samsung as the company prepares to completely shutdown its Samsung Cloud service, instructing users to move their files over to Microsoft’s OneDrive platform. All data will be deleted forever as of July 1st of this year.
Now, Google is folding some of its cards as well by discontinuing its free “unlimited” photo uploads to the Google Photos service. A popular option to secure all of your precious memories taken from your mobile devices into the cloud. There you can store, sort, and share them freely, as well as restore them to your devices when you move to new models (or keep them there to free up space on those devices).
Thankfully, users will still be able to make use of the service for their most important files. However, any uploads you make past June 1st (2021) will now be considered part of their overall Google storage limitations. This means you will be limited to 15GB between everything you store within Google’s cloud unless you upgrade to a paid Google One account.
All of your old photos will remain grandfathered in, so this would be a fine time to start backing up all of your devices while you still have a chance (hint hint).
To be fair to Google, there are over a billion users taking advantage of the Google Photos service, with billions of images between them all. You can only imagine the amount of storage required for all of that. Offering that for free would eventually take its toll on any company. Even the behemoths.
