I would rather pay for Google Photos

As you may have heard by now, Google is going to start charging for all photos uploaded to Google Photos from June 2021, not just full resolution images. While this may be alarming for some users, I would rather pay for Google Photos.

Why would I say such a thing after having an option to upload all my photos to Google Photos for free?

You know that saying that if you’re not paying for a product, then you are the product? If we start paying for our photo storage on Google Photos, then doesn’t this change the dynamic, somewhat?

If we start paying for our Google Photos storage beyond the free 15GB that Google gives all Google accounts, then we can expect that –

• Google Photos not fall into the category of abandoned Google products; and
• Google respect our privacy as you’d expect from a paid service where they earn revenue directly from users, and not from ads, and so on.

Although I also use Flickr, and have a Pro account with unlimited storage, Google Photos is my go-to service for sharing photos. The search capability is just incredible, and it works really well for me.

Google’s pricing is pretty reasonable through Google One where plans start off at about $2 a month for 100GB of storage.

All in all, while the transition away from a free service is a pity, expecting this service to remain free, and to be constantly improved, while remaining free, is unreasonable. Worse than that, it’s a path to Google Photos being shelved one day.

So, yes, I would rather pay for Google Photos.