It’s August 12, 2025, yet more things came to light that truly reveal the predatory nature of Google Photo’s practices.
Quick Background: I switched to a Pixel in mid 2024, I purposefully went for a 512GB Pixel, knowing that Google’s cameras will be creating large photo files. Unknowingly, google automatically backs up my photos to cloud using my free gmail account (15GB) even though I do not prefer to use cloud storage. Within 6 months my gmail account was full, although I still have tons of physical storage.
Still, after I had paused the automatic upload to cloud storage (99% full!), I expected to be able to use my phone normally. But increasingly, I found that everyday functions that should be accessible to a normal phone user is not the case for a pixel user.
Here are a list of things I discovered that Google Photos does to force consumer to upgrade to paid cloud storage:
- They bind the trash functionality to the cloud! This means if your cloud storage is full (15GB), even if you don’t intend to use the cloud functionality, they will prevent you from restoring the deleted image from your phone’s local trash folder – forcing you to upgrade or lose the accidentally deleted image.
- They bind the functionality to create folders inside Google photos to the cloud storage space. This means if your cloud storage is full, they will prevent you from creating local folders in your physical phone and organising your photos. I tried to circumvent this barrier but was unsuccessful.
- They bind the search photos functionality to cloud storage space. If your cloud storage is low, they will prevent you from using the google photo search function.
- They will display a red ugly warning every time you go into google photos, warning that your storage levels are full.
- They will actually send ads to you to upgrade to google cloud within the google photos app if your storage levels are low.
Case in point, Google is using underhanded practises to force consumers to use and pay for cloud storage, by tying normally free functions in phones to a cloud-based service. Essentially asking the customer to jump through hoops to be able to enjoy what they purchased – a phone that should automatically give you folder, trash, search functions, plus the full usage of 512GB physical storage.
It was shocking that a decade ago, their motto was “Don’t be evil”. I remember at that time, everyone wanted to work at Google for their innovativeness. But honestly, the first word that popped into my mind was “evil”. There was no other way to describe what I found, and it was a chilling discovery.