Thanks to the high-quality compressed mode of Google Drive, users can upload an infinite number of photos to Google Drive. The company has been encouraging users to use this storage platform for some time. Google even promises that high-quality storage offers "nearly the same visual quality" as the original image. With this storage, users don't need to store images on their phones. They can always download these images at any time.
However, over time, the pressure on Google became enormous. After 4 trillion images of various sizes hit Google Drive, the company made some changes to the rules. The number of images to download was no longer infinite. Google was supposed to charge users who exceeded the 15GB limit from June 1, 2021.
With new rules that are financially beneficial for Google, its image storage preferences appear to be changing. The company no longer favors high-end storage, and there is now a warning for users. According to Google, users risk damaging their photos if they don't switch from high-quality uploads to original ones. This information is contained in one of the promotional emails sent to Google Photo users. At this time, the company is promoting its new premium photo editing features.
The email contains a sample of the original image as well as a "High Quality Compression" image. Google says that "Original quality photos retain the finest details and allow you to enlarge, crop, and print photos with fewer pixels." This is an unfortunate situation for Google Photos users. At the very least, millions of Android users will be affected.
What does Google gain from this
With high-quality compression, users can only use 16MP images or 1080p videos for free until June 21. However, for original quality images, users can use whatever pixel size they want. This means that the original images will produce much larger images and videos. It is clear that the original images will take up much more space. So, as soon as the 15GB of free storage runs out, users start paying
So it looks like Google is encouraging users to use Original Images, which consume more space. Of course, most Android phones these days use more than 16MP as their main cameras, so they wouldn't claim to be high quality anyway. Android phones with 108 MP sensors easily consume 15 GB of memory. When this happens, Google starts making money from users.
