In defense of Google, I have a first-gen Pixel that still gets unlimited Google Photos uploads.
This phone is seven years old and Google had kept its commitment that photo uploads would remain free for the life of the phone.
Also in defense of Google - I’m still grandfathered in to the $8 plan for YouTube premium because I signed up and have remained subscribed since 2013 when they offered promotional pricing at the beginning of Google Play Music. Years later, they added YouTube Red (now Premium) to the subscription which REALLY sweetened the pot. But they’ve never bumped my subscription price up.
Not for long. I’ve been getting the “You’re using an ad blocker” banner for the couple of days. I’m not losing my Gmail account over it.
Same here. At $8 it’s an amazing value. I plan on keeping it until they kill off parts of it or raise the price.
The Pixel hasn’t left the house since 2018. All it has done since then is run SyncThing and upload the photos/videos taken by my current phones.
I’ve never heard of Syncthings, could you tell me more about it? Sounds interesting!
Be prepared to pay when it dies. I assumed it wouldn’t count when I got a new phone. It does. So now they want me to sign up for a plan. Well, now they want me to pay more for a higher tier. I got a nas instead. I’m cancelling the plan.
I forgot that I had years of free uploads from my Pixel 2. That eventually expired. But I never had to pay for those uploads.
I also had 100 extra GB for two years for being one of the first Google Maps guides, populating the map with the first photos of businesses etc. When that expired, I did have to start paying. Google are smart - they got me addicted to having all my files right there wherever I was. It’s only $20ish per year for that tier, I have been happy to pay for it. I think this might be what happened to you. You may have had some sort of promotion that expired.
I never had to do this with all the media I uploaded via my Pixel 2 back when it has those benefits. Everything I uploaded that way counts zero toward my storage cap, to this day.
