Hello, my name is Joe and I have a problem with cloud storage.
This all happened last Saturday. It was a rainy and cold afternoon, I was getting ready to meet with some friends for drinks, and there I was – sitting at my Mac Mini, signing up for the 2TB Google One plan so I could upload all my photos. Can I store Google Photos?
So far, it doesn’t seem that bad. But the problem is that I didn’t really do it need To do this. But I did it anyway, and now I get the chance to share my (potentially) stupid purchase with all of you.
Why was this purchase so foolish?
Let me be clear: On their own, the Google One plans are really good value. Spending $20 per year gets you Google Photos, Google Drive, Gmail, and 100GB of storage for device backups. You also get dark web monitoring, a VPN, and more editing tools in Google Photos. Spending more money on more expensive plans gets you extra storage and some extra features.
I’ve been on the basic 100GB plan for a long time, but on Saturday, I decided it was time to upgrade to the 2TB plan for $100 per year. This is a big upgrade in itself, but what makes it absurd is that I’m already paying $33 a month for the Apple One Premier plan. That plan gives me 2TB of iCloud storage, and so I’m keeping more than 13,000 of my photos and videos backed up to Apple Photos.
Apple Photos has been a perfectly good service for setting up my digital library, and I really have no complaints with it. But here I am, now signed up for one more 2TB storage plan for one more A place to store thousands of my photos.
After all, why did I do this?
It’s all the Google Pixel 8 Pro’s fault
The answer is simple: I blame it all on the Google Pixel 8 Pro.
I’ve been using the Pixel 8 Pro as one of the phones I carry with me daily (along with the iPhone 15 Pro Max), and I’ve enjoyed every second of it with it. The design is beautiful, the Tensor G3 processor is surprisingly good, and its Android 14 software is a joy to use. But what’s really got me hooked on the Pixel 8 Pro are its cameras.
Google takes Pixel 8 Pro Incredible Photos. You can safely expect any $1,000 phone these days to have high-quality cameras, but something about the Pixel 8 Pro made it especially fun to shoot with. Maybe it’s because the phone is still new and I’m in the honeymoon phase. But I think the bigger reason is that its cameras are really good.
This was further reinforced over the weekend when I took the Pixel 8 Pro with me to a local cider mill, a pumpkin patch, a few bars, and a nature trail. At all these settings, the phone captured scenes as well as I could have wanted.
But it doesn’t just depend on the quality of the photo after pressing the shutter button. I’ve also become surprisingly interested in the Pixel 8 Pro’s various AI editing tools — all of which require that you have your photos backed up to Google Photos. Best Take has already come in handy several times for some group photos, and while I’m not completely sold on the Magic Editor, it’s surprisingly fun to play with – even if the end result isn’t always great.
I’m also really looking forward to Zoom Enhance — a Pixel 8 Pro feature that’s “coming later.” In theory, you’ll be able to pinch-to-zoom any photo supported by Google Photos and digitally enhance the quality with AI. If it works the same as Google’s demo of the feature, it could be In fact Mighty.
Be it Best Take, Magic Editor, Zoom Enhance, or other features like Magic Eraser, all these editing tools work Any Pictures you have in Google Photos – not just ones you took with the Pixel 8 Pro.
Google is pulling me in
Herein lies my dilemma. I plan to continue using the Google Pixel 8 Pro as one of my everyday smartphones – and possibly even my camera of choice for the foreseeable future. I want easy access to the photos I take, along with my thousands of other images, and I want to mess around with Google Photos’ growing editing tools on photos that are years and years old.
Because the Pixel 8 Pro’s camera is so good and because Google Photos is wowing me with its editing suite, I now own the 2TB Google One plan, not in spite of In fact need one.
Part of me is eager to transfer my Apple Photos library to Google Photos and have two trusted locations for all my photos, but part of me dreads the idea of managing two separate cloud photo libraries.
Is there a moral in this story? Am I just trying to justify spending $100 that I didn’t need to spend? Ultimately I think this is a testament to how great the Google Pixel camera experience is. From the moment you press the shutter button to the countless edits you can make to your photos, no other phone offers a picture-taking experience like the Google Pixel. And as someone who places a lot of value in it, I think my $100 may have been well spent.
