Ryan Whitwam, Android Police, quoting the Pixel 2 product page fine print on the Google Store:

Free, unlimited original-quality storage for photos and videos taken with Pixel through the end of 2020, and free, unlimited high-quality storage for photos taken with Pixel afterwards.

There’s been a lot of discussion about exactly what this means. At the very least, if you want to keep taking uncompressed, original-quality pictures past the cutoff date at the end of 2020, you’ll need to start paying for storage. What is unclear is what that means for all the original-quality photos you’ve already placed on the Google Photos servers. Will they continue to be stored for free? Will you have to pay for those, too?

To be clear, I have no issue paying for the storage. Apple, after all, charges for iCloud storage already. Just looking for clarification.

Someone at Google know the details? Please let me know and I’ll update the post.

[H/T Oliver Thomas]

UPDATE: Someone at Google reached out to clarify this issue. As fair a response as I could have hoped for. Here’s the Q&A:

• Me: If I have original-quality photos stored for free, what happens to them once the end of 2020 deadline passes? Do they get deleted? Compressed? Do they stay there but I lose access to them unless I pay for enough storage so they fit?
• Google: They remain at original quality, for free. The change is only for taken photos thereafter.

As I read this, you can take all the original-quality (non-compressed) photos you want and they will always be available, non-compressed. Once the deadline passes, you’ll have a decision to make that only impacts photos taken after the deadline. Those post-deadline pics will be limited by the tier you choose after the deadline. Make sense?