You don’t want to pay for Google Photos storage

Google disappointed many users when it announced it would end free storage for Google Photos. Starting June 1, 2021, you’ll have to pay for a Google One subscription if your photos run beyond your 15GB of free Google Drive storage. Fortunately, there are already plenty of alternatives to Google Photos out there. It’s just a matter of whether you want to jump ship or not.

With that in mind, we asked you, our readers, if you were willing to pay to have your media stored on Google Photos. This is how you voted in our survey.

Do you pay to save your media in Google Photos?

Results

Of course, many of our readers are unwilling to pay for a Google service that has been free for five years. Out of a total of 2,115 votes, 48.2% of our survey participants switched to other free alternatives to Google Photos.

Meanwhile, 19% of survey participants are willing to pay additional fees for a Google One subscription. 25% are still unsure what they will do and how things will play out.

A tiny fraction (7.6%) of our surveyed readers agreed that they will pay for a different media storage service.

Your comments

• cfischer69: I was looking for the “hell no” option. To everyone who will be counting on the new promise that your existing paintings will be grandfathered, how long will it take to break that promise? If I pay to save my photos, it won’t go to Google.
• The One: So I’ll pay x dollars for y cloud storage, and in a year or two or three, Google will arbitrarily increase the price. That makes me pay more money for Google to host my content and that keeps repeating until I die? I don’t see the benefit.
• Austin Eschweiler: This could be the kick to using my Plex server as a photo storage as well.
• rap: If I store locally, I have to pay to back up my local storage. I want my stuff somewhere in the cloud. I also make a backup of Prime but I’m not sure how much is in there and I can walk out of there too. I’ll probably pay when I run out of space. Google has a tool that can tell you when to go out and mine says a year. However, a lot can happen during this time.
• Jarrod: I have a family ownership plan, and three out of five of us have a Pixel, so it won’t really affect us anyway. Pretty soon four out of five of us will have a Pixel (my wife just won’t give up on the iPhone). But to be on the safe side, I’ve been paying for the 200GB plan for months. Long before all that. This is mainly because I want to save my photos in full resolution. Unfortunately, I’ll probably have to use the free high definition version in the future.
• Nikolas Spiridakis: I understand that there are many storage alternatives, but where else can you find a service with such good AI? I mean, if you’ve ever used photos, you know it categorizes things, identifies faces, you can find photos by describing them, etc. These things are hard to find …