12 PCWorld DECEMBER 2020NEWS GOOGLE’S NEW STORAGE POLICY
Photos as well as
iCloud.
Google’s policy
shift eliminates the
major loophole that
allows users to store
photos with
Google Photos for
free: Today, if a
photo is stored in
what Google calls
High Quality, it
doesn’t count
against your 15GB
cap that Google’s
free tier affords.
Starting in June
2021, it will. There’s
one exception: Photos shot with any recent
Pixel (Pixel 1 through 5) won’t be affected by
this policy shift, even after June 1, 2021.
(High Quality is still slightly lossy, which
means that the image won’t be quite as crisp
and clear as a shot stored in Original Quality.
However, storing a photo in Original Quality
counts against your cap, and this won’t
change. To check to see what format your
photos are stored in, go to photos.google.
com/settings (go.pcworld.com/phst). You
can also convert photos stored in Original
Quality to High Quality by choosing the
Recover Storage option. )
These new changes, according to (go.
pcworld.com/jose) Jose Pastor, vice presidentof Google Workspace, and Shimrit Ben-Yair,
vice president of Google Photos, were made
“to enable us to continue investing in these
products for the future.” They’ll apply not only
to users with free Google accounts, but
members of the paid Workspace accounts,
too. There’s one exception: photos shot with
a Pixel phone.
Google said that the company was
flagging users early (though, unfortunately,
on a national holiday) to give users and
administrators plenty of time to adjust.
Google also highlighted a pair of tools it’s
made available to help you plan for the
future: a storage estimate (go.pcworld.com/
stes) of how long it’ll be before your freeGoogle provides you an estimate of how much cloud storage you have available
via Google Photos at photos.google.com/storage (go.pcworld.com/g0st).