According to the company, the failure was not so comprehensive, but it may have given headaches to those affected. As backups were counting on storage, users who suffered from the bug and consumed the free 15 GB were notified by the company, which will start deleting files from accounts that exceed the space limits in the cloud. Due to the error, the company is offering refunds for subscriptions to the Google One cloud service, which offers an extra 100 GB in its basic plan. “You may have purchased a plan because we mistakenly informed you that you were out of storage space,” explained the company. According to the company, the refund will cover subscriptions from January 8 to October 20, 2020. That is, despite having been fixed, the bug has been present on iOS for almost the entire year.
New policy for 2021
While Android users have not suffered from the bug, the Google Photos error also serves as a “warm-up” for the app’s new storage policy. As of the end of May 2021, the platform will no longer offer free file backup on all platforms. With the change, the bug that occurred on iOS will become the rule: all files saved in Google Photos, Gmail and Google Drive will count in the account’s 15 GB of cloud storage as of June 1, 2021. If the space is not enough, the user will have to delete files or hire one of the Google One plans, which offers extra cloud storage for monthly fees starting at R $ 6.99.
