Occasionally, I want to talk about something that isn’t part of my regular news roundups, or a specific product I want to review/live with, and I want to create a space for me to do that. This will still be about tech, but will be more personal, something more about how I do things, use technology, etc. The idea behind this came from some big changes coming to Google Photos, and how I’m going to deal with that.

Starting tomorrow, a long promised change to Google Photos will take effect. It isn’t a welcome change, and has forced me to think about/change how I manage photos taken with my phone. 

When Google Photos launched in 2015, one of the tentpole features was that users could opt to store an unlimited number of photos in what the company called “high quality.”  This was done automatically in the background with no interaction needed from the user. It just worked.  In the Google Photos cloud service high quality photos were compressed versions of photos taken.  But thanks to some Google magic, in many cases it was near impossible to tell the difference between the original photos and the “high quality” compressed version, especially looking at them on a phone’s screen.  Yes, if I took the original photo and the compressed version, and blew them up to 100% on a big, 27” computer screen I would be able to tell the difference, but considering that the vast majority of photos taken on a phone are never viewed on anything but a phone, or maybe an iPad, this was an acceptable compromise.  For those who wanted to upload the full, uncompressed version of the image to Google photos, they could choose to upload photos in “original quality” which is just the full photo uploaded.  Photos uploaed at full quality, however, count against a user’s cloud storage with Google.  Google gives users 15GB of free storage, but that storage bucket covers Gmail, Google Drive, and Google Photos combined.  Additional storage is available to purchase, but for many users, myself included, uploading in high quality was enough. 

The idea that every photo ever taken could be stored in Google Photos at no charge was a game changer, and one I took full advantage of.  I take a lot of pictures from my phone, and every single photo I’ve taken from a phone since late 2015 is accessible to me.  It was remarkable. 

But tomorrow, that comes to an end.  Beginning June 1, all photos uploaded to Google Photos, even those in “high quality” now count against a user’s cloud storage.  All photos taken before June 1 do not count, but any photo uploaded after that date does. 

I’ve thought a lot about what to do over the last few weeks.  I subscribe to Microsoft 365, which gives me 1TB of cloud storage in OneDrive, so in addition to backing up my pictures in high quality to Google Photos, I also back up originals to OneDrive.  This means that if I ever do need the original quality photo, I can find it in OneDrive.  That’s part of the reason I was perfectly happy with using the compressed, “high quality” backup in Google Photos, because I had another copy elsewhere.  But now I have to figure out how to move forward. 

Looking at the same picture both in Google Photos, and the original copy on OneDrive, it looks like the copy in Google Photos is about half the size of the original, or 3.5MB instead of 6MB.  That does add up over time.  I have about 40GB of photos taken on my Galaxy Note 10+, which would mean that stored on Google it would be about 20GB.  Not nothing, but if using Google Photos at all to store photos takes up storage space, does it make sense to use a lower quality version when there is much less of a tradeoff?  But if I start using Google Photos with original quality, that will mean new photos are in original quality, while older ones are compressed.  And if I switch to original quality in Google, do I keep uploading the same photo to OneDrive as well?  Video is its own can of worms.  Video files are much bigger, and while I take video in 4k on my phone, when uploading to google photos, that video is converted to a much smaller 1080p file.  The original 4k file will be large, and just 5 minutes of video can take about 7% of a user’s 15GG of free storage, or 1% of 100GB.  Again, it may not sound like a lot, but just ten 5 minute videos, less than one hour of video, will take 10GB of cloud storage.  IT all adds up fast.  It’s kind of a mess. And that’s before I get to pricing. 

Google Cloud storage is marketed under a “Google One” brand.  There are a few ancillary benefits to Google One, but the primary use of it is storage.  As of this writing paying for 100GB of storage in Google is $28/year.  Doubling the storage to 200GB is $40/year.  The next tier up is a significant jump, in both storage in price.  For $140/year, you get 2TB of cloud storage.  In terms of value per dollar it is a better deal than $40 for 200GB, but I really wish there was a 1TB storage option at, say, $80/year.  For me to continue using Google Photos, I would start by paying for 100GB of storage, then going to 200GB when I eventually reach that limit.  But when I eventually do reach 200GB of storage, having to pay $100 more right away is not something I look forward to. 

Ultimately, what I’ve decided to do is start uploading photos to google in Original Quality, and to keep uploading to OneDrive for as long as I maintain a Microsoft 365 subscription.  I’ll live with the inequity in photo quality, because the decision I’ve made is that if I have to pay to upload photos to Google, I may as well upload them in full quality.  For videos… I’m not sure what I’m going to do.  I don’t take as many videos as photos, but they’ll obviously eat more storage, so this is something I may need to revisit in the future.   

The biggest change to me will be having to actually manage my photo library differently.  I’ll often take 4-5 pictures of the same thing, and even if one is better than the rest, I would keep all of the photos because the backup was free regardless.  I also take a lot of burst photos, which can be up to 100 photos at a time.  Now, instead of letting every photo exist forever in Google Photos, I have to change how I manage it.  Instead of keeping every copy, I’ll have to start deleting some photos.  Instead of keeping all of the photos in a burst photo, I’ll have to use that feature less, or keep just one photo out of the burst.  These may seem like small inconveniences, but considering Google has spent 6 years telling consumers to just forget about photo management, this represents a big change. 

In the end, it is disappointing, but maybe not surprising, that Google has made this change.  Now that users have been conditioned to use their photos service, which is admittedly quite good, the company has decided that now is the time to charge more for it, and monetize users even further.  It isn’t something I’m happy with, but it’s something I’m choosing to live with. It is the best option among options I don’t love.