With three weeks to go until the changes to Google’s photo storage kick in, I thought this was a good time to remind you of what’s happening…
I know a lot of you use Google Photos on your smartphone – I certainly do.
Up until the 1st June, Google Photos have offered to back up all your phone’s photos and videos to the internet completely free of charge. If you use the “High Quality” option of their automatic “Back up and sync” service, your phone will just do it automatically. Google compress the files so they don’t take up as much storage space, but they do a really good job of it and it doesn’t cost you a penny.
But they decided last year that they couldn’t keep doing that forever. The sheer volume of photos they’re storing is starting to make their systems creak. So as of the 1st of June (that’s about three weeks’ time), any new photos you back up to your Google account will count towards your 15GB free storage allowance.
But remember:
- Any photos that you upload to Google Photos (using their free system) before 1st June will stay completely free – they won’t suddenly start counting towards your storage allowance. So if you’ve got lots of pictures that you haven’t backed up yet, now’s the time to do it.
- After that, Google are still giving you 15GB of storage completely free – which is three times what you get for free from either Apple or Microsoft. (Although, remember that’s not just for photo storage – Gmail emails and anything you store on Google Drive count too.)
- You’ll still be able to use Google’s fancy compressing tools if you want to, to store your photos at “High Quality”, so each picture will take up less space.
Some new faces at The Helpful Book Company
It’s been pretty busy around here lately, what with one thing and another, so we’re very pleased (and relieved!) to welcome two new members of the team…
Shanice has recently joined us as a packing assistant. You might have already had an order packed by Shanice – she’s been with us a month already and is settling in really well. She has two children, both keen cricketers – so she’s looking forward to being able to watch them play again this year.
Millie-Georgina joined the Customer Service team two weeks ago and has already got the hang of most things. She’s settled in brilliantly with the rest of the team and is really enjoying chatting to you all on the phone. She’s certainly brightened up our office with her bright green hair!
We’ll update the “about us” page on our website in the coming week, so you can put a face to the name.