Thread by @dflieb

Today we are announcing that beginning June 1, 2021, new content uploaded to Google Photos in “High Quality” (compressed) will now count toward your storage quota. This is a big change, so let me explain why:

We launched Google Photos in 2015 to give everyone a private place to keep all their photos and videos, with computer vision and AI to automatically organize them and make them searchable.

Today, more than 1 billion people rely on Google Photos, uploading an astounding 28 billion photos and videos every week, on top of the more than 4 trillion already uploaded.

But far more importantly, one major thing has changed over the years: Google Photos has become more than just a photo storage tool. It’s become the home of our life’s memories, the place we go when we’re feeling nostalgic. It’s the closest many of us have to a record of our lives

Since so many of you rely on Google Photos as the home of your life’s memories, we believe it’s important that it’s not just a great product, but that it is able to serve you over the long haul.

To ensure this is possible not just now, but for the long term, we’ve decided to align the primary cost of providing the service (storage of your content) with the primary value users enjoy (having a universally accessible and useful record of your life).

And, as always, we will uphold our commitment to not use information in Google Photos for advertising purposes: blog.google/technology/saf…

For many, this will come as a disappointment. We know. We wrestled with this decision for a long time, but we think it’s the right one to make. The good news is that we’ve worked hard to make sure this change is as painless as possible for you:

First, this only applies to newly uploaded content starting June 1, 2021. All existing HQ content remains exempt from storage quota, including all HQ content uploaded b/w now and then.

Second, as always, every Google account comes with 15GB of free storage. This means that more than 80% of Google Photos users will be able to keep uploading content for about 3 more years before running out of space.

We’ve built a tool that estimates the time until you reach your storage quota, based on your personal upload rates: photos.google.com/storage

Third, before this change takes effect, we will be launching some new tools that make it easier to identify and delete content that you don’t want to store, like dark, blurry photos, long videos, and more. We welcome your suggestions for this!

And for users who do want more than the free 15GB, the 100GB Google One plan remains affordably priced at $1.99 per month and also gives you access to additional features and 1:1 human-powered customer service.

Also, you can share your Google One storage with up to 5 additional family members (so 6 total, including you): one.google.com/faq/plan-shari…

I hope this explains why we’re making this change, and as always, we (and I!) are very open to your questions and feedback. You can also read more about this change here: blog.google/products/photo…