Google storage limitation already caused havoc

[Karyn219]

Out of nowhere people stopped calling, spammers stopped spamming. I felt so alone! LOL...

Not exactly. What happened is that I subscribe to various services such as Google Voice, Gmail, Photos, Drive, etc. and ALL of them, EVERY SINGLE SCINTILLA of information counts against your Google quota.

Google announced that they were going to cut off the infinite data storage and photos come this June 2021. They've already done it.

Out of a clear blue sky I was not getting any my Google Voice voicemails gmails and I kept getting these bizarre messages when I would try to upload photos to the Photos cloud.

I cleaned my photos out to the tune of at least 2,000 videos and photos to no avail. Indications are still that my storage is full. When I actually look at how much photographs and videos are taking up it's less than 1% of the 15GB which means that every single time I breathe near my phones it's counting as save data to the Google cloud or whatever it is now.

I looked into spending the $129 for 100 GB but it suddenly occurred to me that if they're counting all of everything that you do against that data storage it will run out very very quickly. So what I did was I purchased the Microsoft cloud and sent all of my photos and videos over to that ($99 a year for 6TB) BUT before I wipe out all things Google Photos so that I can start receiving my emails and messages again, I want to make sure that this is actually a result of their data storage imposition or if all of my devices, at the same exact time, went insane. I kind of don't think that every single device I own went insane at one time...I'm pretty sure it's Google nonsense but just making sure.

I appreciate your feedback

 

[ocnbrze]

what phone do you have?

 

[Karyn219]

what phone do you have?

I use several but my main and favorite is my Google Pixel 1st generation.

The reason that's my very favorite phone, and I have newer Pixels, is that it was the very first pure Google product and it is extraordinarily customizable, receives all the latest Android updates, and It's completely free of clutter.

I've got four more still in boxes and I have no plans on getting newer Pixels anytime soon as I don't like them as much.

 

[Hadron]

I use several but my main and favorite is my Google Pixel 1st generation.

The reason that's my very favorite phone, and I have newer Pixels, is that it was the very first pure Google product and it is extraordinarily customizable, receives all the latest Android updates, and It's completely free of clutter.

Surely that's "receiveD" all the latest Android updates? The original Pixel never received Android 11, and the Pixel 2 gets just one more security update in about 2 weeks' time.

Anyway I think you may be confused by Google Drive's poorly-designed and confusing presentation of storage information. You say that your Drive was full, you remove a load of images, it's now telling you that < 1% of your Drive is used by photos and yet it's still full. That suggests to me that the Drive being full was nothing to do with Photos backups, they were never being counted against the quota so removing them makes no difference. And as support for that here's what I see in my account:

* I am currently using 7GB out of 15GB Drive storage in total (it's not clear whether that's binary GB or decimal GB)
* Drive tells me that Google Photos is using 2.39 GB of my Drive quota.
* Google Photos is telling me that I've 18.96GB of images and videos backed up to my Google account.
* My phone's DCIM folder is 17.6 binary GB in size, which is 18.9 decimal GB.

So for my account clearly Google are not yet counting Photos backups against the quota (the 2.4GB of photos they do count are presumably things from other sources than my Pixel's camera), so it's unlikely they are doing that for you either.

So to test your theory that the problem with your Google Voice account is due to Drive filling up you need to clear some other stuff from Drive. One thing that might be worth doing though is checking the "bin" in your Google Drive: there was about 1.5GB of stuff in mine, and most of it had been auto-deleted from Drive but never cleaned-up. If you can get a bit of free space in it and the service resumes that will confirm what the problem is. But I don't think Photos backups are anything to do with it - yet.

GMail and all the rest, yes, they do count against it.

 

[Karyn219]

Surely that's 'receiveD' all the latest Android updates? The original Pixel never received Android 11, and the Pixel 2 gets just one more security update in about 2 weeks' time.

Anyway I think you may be confused by Google Drive's poorly-designed and confusing presentation of storage information. You say that your Drive was full, you remove a load of images, it's now telling you that &lt; 1% of your Drive is used by photos and yet it's still full. That suggests to me that the Drive being full was nothing to do with Photos backups, they were never being counted against the quota so removing them makes no difference. And as support for that here's what I see in my account:

* I am currently using 7GB out of 15GB Drive storage in total (it's not clear whether that's binary GB or decimal GB)
* Drive tells me that Google Photos is using 2.39 GB of my Drive quota.
* Google Photos is telling me that I've 18.96GB of images and videos backed up to my Google account.
* My phone's DCIM folder is 17.6 binary GB in size, which is 18.9 decimal GB.

So for my account clearly Google are not yet counting Photos backups against the quota (the 2.4GB of photos they do count are presumably things from other sources than my Pixel's camera), so it's unlikely they are doing that for you either.

So to test your theory that the problem with your Google Voice account is due to Drive filling up you need to clear some other stuff from Drive. One thing that might be worth doing though is checking the 'bin' in your Google Drive: there was about 1.5GB of stuff in mine, and most of it had been auto-deleted from Drive but never cleaned-up. If you can get a bit of free space in it and the service resumes that will confirm what the problem is. But I don't think Photos backups are anything to do with it - yet.

GMail and all the rest, yes, they do count against it.

My XLs that are in operation are running 10.

In any event, It has become a tedious horrifying nightmare trying to get rid of enough Google data in order to use my voicemail or any of the fundamental things like Gmail.

I'm very much aware that the way that Google is presenting the data used is a skew. I realized that as soon as I typed and posted. I was just reading off of it and after I posted I was thought ...wait a second that couldn't be right.

Whatever the case, and I've grown quite tired of trying to deal with this for the last week, I think it absolutely abominable that Google has done this.

One of the main reasons that people opted for Google phones to start with was because of the unlimited storage! That, And the fact that they're obviously Google.

I'm running into the same problem that I had anticipated and trying to squeeze some of these files down that duplicated each other. It's hard to get rid of them because they're not too duplicates, as you know.

The new cloud that I moved pictures to has scrambled them up so badly I can't figure out the last 10 years! It's got pictures from 2015 saying that they were posted yesterday photos from last year that are saying that they post in 2007.

What a nightmare predicament Google has caused.

I guess these big companies can never be greedy enough.

 

[Hadron]

I am frequently critical of Google, but I genuinely don't think that your experience here is anything to do with their decision to monetise Photos. And Photos backups are the only unlimited storage Google offered to Pixel owners, so as that hasn't changed yet then your problems are not due to Google's announced changes there. I don't know whether your problem is that Google Voice intrinsically means you use more Drive storage, or because you receive a lot of large files in your GMail and keep them there, or something else (Voice doesn't exist on my side of the Atlantic so I've no experience of it), but I don't think it would be any different if you owned a Samsung, Moto or whatever.

As for removing free Photos storage, the simple truth is that Google are a commercial corporation: they have a legal duty to shareholders to maximise profits, which means that like any other corporation they will screw you in a second if they decide that there is more profit for them in doing that. No corporation is your friend, though many spend money on trying to convince you that they are (but only in the interest of their own profits).

 

[ocnbrze]

just an fyi when it is june 2021, any photos in google photos will be locked in and will not count towards the 15 gigs that is free.....so any photos you might have now, you will not have to worry about come 2021.

i have a butt load of pictures stored there and it will not affect those.....just any photos i take or store after june 2021 will count. i'll probably pay the few bucks a month for additional storage and will most likely have to manage my photos better.

 

[Karyn219]

just an fyi when it is june 2021, any photos in google photos will be locked in and will not count towards the 15 gigs that is free.....so any photos you might have now, you will not have to worry about come 2021.

i have a butt load of pictures stored there and it will not affect those.....just any photos i take or store after june 2021 will count. i'll probably pay the few bucks a month for additional storage and will most likely have to manage my photos better.

I just solved issue. I went to a pc and discovered that EVERY TIME I breathed since February of 2010 google has been clouding my data. I simply deleted it all (except photos). I'm now down to 1% full of google data.

 

[Karyn219]

just an fyi when it is june 2021, any photos in google photos will be locked in and will not count towards the 15 gigs that is free.....so any photos you might have now, you will not have to worry about come 2021.

i have a butt load of pictures stored there and it will not affect those.....just any photos i take or store after june 2021 will count. i'll probably pay the few bucks a month for additional storage and will most likely have to manage my photos better.

I just solved the issue by going to PC and accessing just exactly what Google has in it that's taking up all the space.

I discovered that since February of 2010 that it's been gobbling up data and storing it into a cloud every time that I blink.

I kind of wondered what was going on because it didn't make any sense whatsoever at all to me.

I simply went and deleted all the crap that was hanging out since the year 2010 and now I'm down to less than 1% and those are just Google photos and videos.

I don't know how I managed to overlook that Google was clouding every single thing that I did. I never programmed anything to do such a thing but I really should know better ....I've been around computers long enough.

Google will grab up absolutely any bit of information that you Enter and stick it into their cloud. I found stuff off of phones that I can't even remember having but barely! I found confidential documents in there that were never meant to see anybody's eyes and I thought that I deleted and double deleted and even gutman wiped them off the computer many years ago!

Nope! They were all sitting in the great Google cloud.

 

[puppykickr]

I just solved the issue by going to PC and accessing just exactly what Google has in it that's taking up all the space.

I discovered that since February of 2010 that it's been gobbling up data and storing it into a cloud every time that I blink.

I kind of wondered what was going on because it didn't make any sense whatsoever at all to me.

I simply went and deleted all the crap that was hanging out since the year 2010 and now I'm down to less than 1% and those are just Google photos and videos.

I don't know how I managed to overlook that Google was clouding every single thing that I did. I never programmed anything to do such a thing but I really should know better ....I've been around computers long enough.

Google will grab up absolutely any bit of information that you Enter and stick it into their cloud. I found stuff off of phones that I can't even remember having but barely! I found confidential documents in there that were never meant to see anybody's eyes and I thought that I deleted and double deleted and even gutman wiped them off the computer many years ago!

Nope! They were all sitting in the great Google cloud.

And so now you have learned why I and others do not use Google any more than we have to.

And by the way, Degoo offers 100GB of online storage for FREE.

 

[Hadron]

I don't know how I managed to overlook that Google was clouding every single thing that I did. I never programmed anything to do such a thing but I really should know better ....I've been around computers long enough

Oh, Google make it very easy to turn on collection and logging of data without realising that you are doing it. And then they'll say that you had to click "OK" on something that in many cases didn't explain the consequences so you consented to it. For example, have you ever enabled Google Assistant? Doing that turns on all sorts of history logging (while turning it off does not turn any of that off again).

I personally have all of Google's activity logging turned off, don't use Google docs, and have never allowed sync of any files with Drive except Photos backup - which I will revew before next June, will probably stop using any cloud backup (never very comfortable with it). So I've no feel myself for how quickly Google can fill up 15GB with stuff like this.

 

[Karyn219]

And so now you have learned why I and others do not use Google any more than we have to.

And by the way, Degoo offers 100GB of online storage for FREE.

I'm going to check Degroo out! Thank you!

 

[Karyn219]

Oh, Google make it very easy to turn on collection and logging of data without realising that you are doing it. And then they'll say that you had to click 'OK' on something that in many cases didn't explain the consequences so you consented to it. For example, have you ever enabled Google Assistant? Doing that turns on all sorts of history logging (while turning it off does not turn any of that off again).

I personally have all of Google's activity logging turned off, don't use Google docs, and have never allowed sync of any files with Drive except Photos backup - which I will revew before next June, will probably stop using any cloud backup (never very comfortable with it). So I've no feel myself for how quickly Google can fill up 15GB with stuff like this.

I was stunned to see how much stuff was there. It was WAY over several terabytes and included data from phones and devices I've not seen in years.

I'm turning everything off as well. I like the Photos app but that's about it. I'm actually rather angry to see documents in the Google cloud. Very personal stuff there. I'd not clue

 

[PitCarver]

And so now you have learned why I and others do not use Google any more than we have to.

And by the way, Degoo offers 100GB of online storage for FREE.

$155.00 a year definitely isn't for me.

 

[Rgarner]

I'm way late to this thread and sorry for that, but I would trust googoo the way I would trust a pack of hungry predators behind my back, because that's just what they are...a pack of hungry predators behind all our backs, a crock of vultures. It's ironic that their pixels are apparently really good phones that aren't stuffed WITH ALL THEIR CRAP, the way many others are just because they have Android. I guess they want to make sure that people pay to get them off their backs if they want to use Android. Praise the Lord for rooting...

 

[ocnbrze]

i don't know, some of google's stuff is pretty good. i love google maps. i use it everyday. i can look at my history to see where i have gone in the past. it is really handy for work use. i do like goole docs. i used it a lot in college. it was handy in group studies. the best is google photos. i never have to worry about losing my photos. i still have photos that i took with my htc evo 4g!!!!! i can get a new device and still have access to my photos. and there is no need to hook the phone to the pc to get them.

i do not feel like a pack of wolves chasing me. my z fold 4 is great. i have plenty of room on my device. i never have to worry about space and it runs incredibly fast.

........but that is just me. i rather have an android device than a crapple one.

 

[Rgarner]

I don't know much about crapple, but I can't imagine not having sd. I suppose it's another of those planned obsolence things to trick people into buying more. The cameras seem great, though.

 

[ocnbrze]

well for me i got used to it when the note 7 was released. i had it for a second before i traded it in for a s8 after the note 7's batteries catching on fire fiasco. but the note 7 first introduced not having an sd card. instead they offered more storage and the use of google photos automatically syncing your photos. since then it has never been an issue with storage for me. so i have gotten used to not having a card.

 

[Rgarner]

I want sd and a decent camera, a zillion dollars, peace, love and a machine gun. I don't want any of "em spying on me or telling me what to do. That said, I guess I am sonewhat of an Android loyalist, having used only a single crapple phone. This was in the day when they had those strange sideways chargers that remind me of vacuum cleaner attachments. That sucker filled up fast.