Google Photos wants money: Stricter storage limitations kick in next week

The service is turning six years old and will kick off its quest for monetization next week, when Google will start getting more restrictive about photo storage limits. The goal is to push users over the 15GB free limit that comes with every Google account so they'll buy more storage via the "Google One" program.

Google Photos launched with two photo storage tiers: uncompressed "Original" quality, which counted toward your storage usage, and compressed "High Quality" photos, which did not count toward the limit. Starting on June 1, all newly uploaded photos—even the compressed ones—will count toward the storage limit. Images uploaded before that date that didn't count toward the limit still won't count. But with automatic upload, it's only a matter of time before shutterbugs fill up their online storage.

Google is adding tools to help you manage your data better under the "manage data" setting on the website and app. A usage estimator references past usage patterns to predict how much time you have left until you fill up your storage. A new "review and delete" section will point out large images and videos, screenshots, and any photos Google thinks are "blurry" (in my limited testing, this feature seemed... very picky). This tool should be available on the web right now, and it's also slowly rolling out to phones. Google is also renaming the compressed "High quality" photo tier as "storage saver," which better denotes what the setting does.

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