photos or videos you’ve uploaded in High quality before June 1, 2021 will not count toward your 15GB of free storage. This means that photos and videos backed up before June 1, 2021 will still be considered free and exempt from the storage limit. You can verify your backup quality at any time in the Photo editor app by going to back up & sync in Settings.”

There has been a lot of criticism surrounding the new policy change, especially in the social media platforms like twitter, wherein users weren’t particularly happy about the announcement. One of the tweets said, “I don’t blame Google Photos for ending free unlimited storage. I blame them for using it as a bludgeon to drive other services out of business, convince people to delete media to free up space, and THEN end free storage when it’s hard for anyone to leave."

Google has also divulged the price of storage space that a user can buy after s/he exceeds the 15 GB limit. The Plans start at $1.99 per month in the U.S. for 100 GB of storage and include additional member benefits like access to Google experts, shared family plans and more. Launched five years ago, Google Photos today stores more than 4 trillion photos, while 28 billion new photos and videos are uploaded onto the platform every week.