Google Photos, the company’s popular photo app, is close to stop its biggest perks. On Wednesday, Google announced it’s updating its storage policy for top quality photos and video. The company said any uploads after June 1, 2021, will count toward the 15GB of storage available with every Google account.
Given service free for five years to enticing consumers with offers of free photo and video storage, Google turned back on consumers Wednesday and says it will start charging from 1st June 2021 for storage and service.
So what other options are out there for us? Sadly, there are few that are free. In an era once we are taking more high-resolution photos and videos than ever before, we either need to invest in multiple hard drives – which sadly, don’t last – or spend monthly on expensive online storage.
When factoring in what proportion storage you would like , remember that it isn’t just photos and videos on your phone, but all those data-hungry apps. On my phone now, I’m watching a minimum of a half a gigabytes each for apps like Facebook and Gmail. Even the Alexa app, which only should be used for controlling the smart speaker, clocks during a quarter of a gig. this stuff add up.
Let’s take a glance at what’s out there and how much it is going to cost.
Amazon Photos
For anyone already paying Rs. 9000/- yearly for Prime membership with Amazon, they get faster shipping, entertainment and free online, unlimited photo storage. The interface isn’t as sleek as Google’s, and therefore the search cannot be compared. as an example , I looked for photos with a “candle” in them, and Amazon found several. But how does a photograph of individuals walking on a pier find yourself as a candle? Because Amazon related to the lights that way.
Apple iCloud
There’s a reason Apple’s “Services” division surpassed the iPad and Mac computers to become Apple’s second-biggest revenue generator. Services include anything subscription related, from Music and iCloud to all or any those iCloud backups. Yes, Apple offers some free storage, a paltry 5 GB, which might last most of the people a month approximately . Apple charges Rs.75 monthly for 50 GBs (also very small), Rs.2100 for 200 GBs or Rs. 7500 for two TBs. (Families can share the plan with the 200GB or 2 TB selection.)
What’s different about iCloud is that once you pay, you do not need to delete your photos and videos from your phone. You’re actually watching the iCloud version. So if you visited iCloud.com to try to to an enquiry for your photos, you could not search. the sole option is to download. Searching is on the phone or tablet, and it’s generally excellent. an enquiry for a starfish came up with just what I used to be trying to find , and therefore the candle search worked nicely also.
Dropbox
The company that started the web storage biz back in 2007 has pretty straightforward rates. It’s simply 2 TBs for Rs. 700/- monthly or Rs.1350/- to possess the family shares it.
Microsoft
The Windows maker has a web plan called Microsoft OneDrive, but it’s intertwined with sales of online access to programs like Word, Excel, Outlook and PowerPoint, also as 1 TB of online storage, under what it calls Microsoft 365. Rates are Rs. 5250/- yearly for all of it, or Rs. 7500/- yearly when shared with a family. While it’s going to sound cheaper, by Rs. 2100/-, Apple, Google and Dropbox offer you twice the storage (2 TB) for 7500/- yearly.
Google Cloud
Here’s where you would like to be very careful. Google’s rates sound competitive for online storage, but it isn’t just photos and videos here. All those Gmail emails with attachments that you simply forgot to delete also count, as does anything you are doing on Google. (Our friends at Google tell me that my Gmail alone counts for 40 GBs of online storage. Yes, I’ve had the service since the day it started in 2004, and yes, I’m not good about deleting junk, but c’mon guys!) Google charges Rs. 750/- monthly for two TBs or Rs. 3650/- monthly for 10 TBs.
Searching for photos in an era where we shoot thousands and thousands of them is more important than ever, and no one can touch Google when it involves great search. as an example , asking Google to seek out pictures of grilled cheese sandwiches below found several to settle on from.
Jio Cloud Storage,
Jio cloud is available for free of cost to Jio Fiber consumer upto 55 GB to storage of photo and video.
Flickr/SmugMug
The dedicated photo-sharing sites start at Rs. 4500/- yearly with unlimited photo storage. SmugMug limits videos to three GBs in size and 20 minutes long , while Flickr limits videos to 1GB in size, and 10 minutes long . Flickr features a free offering, with up to 1,000 photos, while SmugMug features a free 14-day trial.
Hard drives
You can buy a standard spinning disk 8 TB drive from companies like Western Digital, Seagate et al. for around Rs. 11250/-, which sounds really economical and 4 times the storage of Google, Apple and Dropbox’s yearly plans.Just know that spinning disks eventually go bad, so you’ll want to shop for two drives for 2350/- , and copy your files on both.
Or check out a solid-state drive (SSD) which has no spinning media, and will be a safer place to store your data. But SSD drives are far more expensive, with less capacity. A 2 TB external SSD drive costs a touch over Rs. 15750/-