Google Photos may lock some editing features behind paywall

Google Photos, perhaps one of the most efficient ways of storing and editing images in the cloud, may be implementing some kind of payment wall for folks looking to take advantage of the service.

Google Photos, which has always been free and simply required users to sign in with a Google account, may soon allow for images to be stored and organised on the platform but will require payment to access the editing suite.

This information comes from XDA, who dug into Google Photo’s code and unearthed extra information regarding the services’s latest update. The paywall itself has been labelled as being a part of Google One, the company’s subscription service that has up until this point been mostly used for folks that need a little extra storage on their Google Drive and access to Google Experts, which no-one uses. Probably.

Shortly after we published this article, a reader informed us that Google Photos' Color Pop feature is locked behind a Google One paywall. I reached out to Google for confirmation but haven't heard back yet. https://t.co/99dsMWcKe1 pic.twitter.com/NOWepbpXkH

— Mishaal Rahman (@MishaalRahman) November 6, 2020

Shedding light on Google Photos

The XDA report notes four lines of text in the code that point to the implementation of a Google One paywall. They read as:

• “As a Google One member, you get access to extra editing features”
• “Get extra editing features with a Google One membership”
• “Unlock this feature and more with a Google One membership”
• “Unlock more editing features and {storage_amount} of storage with a Google One membership”

Some users began reporting that the Google One wall had already been implemented as they were denied access to the “colour pop” feature. Speaking to The Verge, Google explained that, “In Google Photos, color pop is a feature that continues to be available for anyone to use, at no cost, for photos with depth information (such as portrait mode). As a part of an ongoing rollout that began earlier this year, Google One members can apply the feature to even more photos of people, including those without depth information.”

So the feature can still be used by folks not subscribed to Google One, but a member of the service will be able to use it for more images and with photos where it may be harder to implement.

We don’t know what other features may be locked behind the Google One subscription but one has to hope that future updates aren’t stifled by a so-called premium tier. Hopefully the newly announced additions to Google Shopping don’t go a similar route but that’s probably just the paranoid ramblings of a madman.

(Source: TNW)