14 DAY TRIAL // One of the cool perks of being a Google+ user is more free storage in Picasa. One of the strange quirks of Picasa Web Albums has been the limiting 1GB of free storage limit.
Gmail gets over 7 GB of storage, but Picasa, where you really need it, only 1 GB. If you're one of the lucky few Google+ users though, images up to 2048x2048 pixels won't count towards the free storage quote.
Google has updated the help page for its "Free storage limits" with new info for Google+ users. Until now, only photos smaller than 800x800 pixels were stored for free and this remains the case for non-Google+ users.
"Picasa Web Albums offers 1 GB of free storage for photos and videos. However, files under certain size limits don't count towards this free storage limit," the help page reads. Notice that the Google help pages already sport the new Google design mantra.
There are several other changes to the way Picasa is used in Google+ as opposed to other Google products, like Blogger. All photos originating from Google+ will be resized to 2048 pixes.
"All photos uploaded in Google+ will be automatically resized to 2048 pixels (on their longest edge) and won't count towards your free storage quota," Google explained.
Essentially, all Google+ photos are stored for free, so the Google social network is on par with Facebook which also offers unlimited photo storage. Recently, Facebook also started enabling users to upload higher resolution images, exactly the same resolution that Google+ users get.
There's more good news for Google+ users as well, even images that don't come from the social network uploaded to Picasa will be stored for free, as long as they are smaller than 2048 pixels. Regular Picasa users can only store images up to 800 pixels for free and this only for the past few months.
"All photos uploaded to Picasa Web Albums over the free size limit will count towards your 1 GB of free storage. When you reach your storage limit, any new photos you upload to Picasa Web larger than the free size limit will be automatically resized to 2048 pixels (on their longest edge)," Google explained. [via Google OS]