You told us: Here's how loyal you are to Google Photos after the storage change

We’re now past Google Photos‘ all-important storage policy change. If you’re a Google Photos user, your high-quality and express-quality photos now count towards your free 15GB storage. If you go beyond that, you’ll have to buy more storage in the form of a Google One plan. A poll previously conducted on Android Authority suggested that most of our readers don’t want to pay extra for Google Photos storage.

So in light of the new storage policy change for the service, we thought of asking you if you’re sticking with Google Photos or switching to an alternative service. Here’s how you voted in our poll.

Are you staying with Google Photos or switching?

Results

Google Photos has some really great features and is also getting some handy new ones now. That’s probably why most of our readers who participated in our poll — 52.2% — said that they would be sticking with Google Photos even after the storage policy change.

About 27% of voters from a total of 44,639 respondents in our poll said that they are not sure if they’ll continue using Google Photos or switch to another service.

Meanwhile, 20.4% of the poll takers said they are definitely moving on to another app, leaving Google Photos behind.

Your comments

tw: Been paying for Google One for a while now, but not with my own money. Ever since Google set expiration dates on the Google rewards app. I’ve just been using the money I make on that for Google One. Every month I make around $4 just answering Google surveys.

The Jrdiver: Welcome to pixel land. I still have my free uploads for a while yet on my 3xl, and my old og xl can be abused for that as well. I should add that I do have a Nas backup setup as well since it’s easier to grab from the PC anyway, but photos is nice to have for trying to find that one photo.

David Hansen: Switching to Synology Moments. In fact, I’m putting all my stuff on Synology which is internet facing with my own domain, and am setting it up with Mail Plus server, Synology Drive, and DS Audio as well.

Nguyễn Tri: I’m not happy with the change but there’s no better options for smart and convenient photo management.

Massimiliano Rubino: I did switch: Yandex photos free unlimited upload of pictures from your phone.

S Singh: Guys I have a 200GB plan with Google. Come on you guys spend a lot of money on phones. What’s the problem with a monthly payment to Google for space?

danwat1234: Got an old Pixel. I will transfer my media from my primary phone to this for uploading to Google photos occasionally.

Nenito: I’m staying. I like the features and have no problem paying for something I use. I got tired of using hard drives that age and need replacing years ago. I knew going in that eventual Google would go down this line, and prices seem fair enough.

Josh Daniels: Google Photos is great. But one of the reasons I bought a pixel phone was free original-quality storage. Upgraded to a pixel 3a because they promised it would continue, but they changed their tune when the 4 came out. Now it’s been downgraded to free high-quality storage. Enough with the lies. Luckily I had already picked up a Nas for storage and backups in 2017. Just moving over. Allowing both until I use up the what? 17GB? The photos I pulled (2016 to present) via takeouts were 27GB.

tom4jean: I, fortunately, bought 35 GB of storage for $5 a year from Google a number of years back. They obviously don’t sell that plan anymore. As long as I don’t let the payment lapse, I get to keep that plan indefinitely. I ended up just buying a home NAS, maybe a bit more expensive upfront, but over time will pay itself off and opens up more options for file storage and hosting media. Not to mention full ownership and control over my files.

Paul McMonagle: I waffle back and forth. I’ve got photos from 2008 forward. I’ve migrated them from hard copy to digital, then Google photos, then begun the move to Amazon photos. However, Google Photos is much more user-friendly and has a more intuitive and user-friendly cross-platform app (my children are apple users) for school. So what to do? I don’t know yet, but it’s really frustrating. Amazon, Google, iPhone work together for the consumer!

kvols: Google has gotten into a habit of creating a great service, get you hooked, them kill the service, or at least crippling. I really enjoyed Google Play Music, and would not hesitate to recommend it to anyone. YouTube Music, on the other hand, is so limited and the mix with videos on YouTube is plainly stupid and annoying. Google Photos used to be a great service, simple to use, but every time I use it now, I have to search for where to find things, just to see it being changed in another update.

spacebar2011: It’s not an unfair deal at all IMO. It’s probably the best cloud offering, app, and editing tools wise. Far superior to iCloud photos whatever, OneDrive, or anything else I’ve tried. I’m talking purely about photos here. The only other service that’s incredible value is Amazon photos included in Prime, free+unlimited original photo files in pretty much any format, including RAW files. The app kinda sucks, but I use it on the desktop to auto-backup my entire photography catalog.