We are now through the important change to Google Photos’ storage policy. If you’re a Google Photos user, your high-quality, express-quality photos now count towards your 15GB of free storage. If you go beyond that, you’ll need to buy more storage in the form of a Google One plan. A previously conducted survey on Android authority suggested that most of our readers don’t want to pay extra for Google Photos storage.
With the new change in storage policy for the service, we considered asking you to stick with Google Photos or switch to an alternative service. This is how you voted in our survey.
Are you sticking with Google Photos or are you switching?
Results
Google Photos has some really great features, and it’s getting some handy new ones too. This is probably why most of our readers who took our survey – 52.2% – said they would stay with Google Photos even after the storage policy was changed.
About 27% of voters, out of a total of 44,639 respondents in our poll, said they were not sure whether they would continue to use Google Photos or switch to another service.
Meanwhile, 20.4% of respondents said they would definitely switch to another app and leave Google Photos behind.
Your comments
tw: I’ve been paying for Google One for a while, but not with my own money. Since Google set expiration dates for the Google Rewards app. I’ve only used the money I make for Google One. I make about $ 4 every month just answering Google surveys.
The Jrdiver: Welcome to Pixelland. I still have my free uploads on my 3xl for a while, and my old og xl can also be misused for this. I should add that I also have a Nas backup setup as it’s easier to grab from PC anyway, but photos are nice when trying to find that one photo.
David Hansen: Switching to Synology Moments. In fact, I put all of my stuff on Synology connected to the internet with my own domain, and also set it up with Mail Plus server, Synology Drive, and DS Audio.
Nguyễn Tri: I’m not happy with the change, but there are no better options for smart and convenient photo management.
Massimiliano Rubino: I switched: Yandex Photos free unlimited upload of pictures from your phone.
S Singh: Folks, I have a 200GB plan on Google. Come on, you guys spend a lot of money on cell phones. What’s the problem with paying Google monthly for storage?
danwat1234: Got an old pixel. I’ll be transferring my media to it from my primary phone for the occasional upload to Google Photos.
Nenito: I’m staying. I like the features and have no problem paying for something I use. I’m tired of using hard drives at this age that have to be replaced years ago. I knew it would go that far on Google at some point, and the prices seem fair enough.
Josh Daniels: Google Photos is great. But one of the reasons I bought a Pixel phone was because of the original quality free storage. Upgrade to Pixel 3a because they promised it would go on but they changed their tune when the 4 came out. Now it has been downgraded to free high quality storage. Enough with the lies. Fortunately, I had already bought a Nas for storing and backups in 2017. I just moved. Allow both until I have what? 17GB? The photos I pulled over Takeouts (2016 to date) were 27GB.
tom4jean: Fortunately, a few years ago I bought 35GB of storage from Google for $ 5 a year. You are obviously not selling this plan anymore. As long as I don’t forfeit the payment, I can keep this plan indefinitely. I ended up just buying a home NAS, maybe a little more expensive upfront, but over time it will pay off and open up more options for file storage and media hosting. Not to mention complete ownership and control of my files.
Paul McMonagle: I wiggle back and forth. I have photos as of 2008. I switched them from hard copy to digital, then to Google Photos, and then started moving to Amazon Photos. However, Google Photos is much more user-friendly and has a more intuitive and easy-to-use cross-platform app (my kids are Apple users) for school. So what to do I don’t know yet, but it’s really frustrating. Amazon, Google, iPhone work together for the consumer!
kvols: Google has got into the habit of creating a great service, making one addicted, killing or at least crippling the service. I really enjoyed Google Play Music and would have no hesitation in recommending it to anyone. YouTube Music, on the other hand, is so limited and the mixture with videos on YouTube is simply stupid and annoying. Google Photos used to be a great service, easy to use, but every time I use it now I have to look where to find things only to see it change in another update.
spacebar2011: It’s not an unfair deal at all IMO. It’s probably the best cloud offering, app, and editing tools out there. Far better than iCloud Photos, OneDrive, or anything else I’ve tried. I’m talking about photos here. The only other service that has incredible value is Amazon Photos included with Prime, free + unlimited original photo files in pretty much any format including RAW files. The app kind of sucks, but I use it on the desktop to automatically back up my entire photo catalog.