Feb 28, 2011 14:38 GMT  ·  By

Google has a nice little surprise for Picasa Web users. While Google still hasn't gotten around to upgrading the amount of free storage they get and they still have to cope with the paltry 1 GB of free storage Google has been offering from the get go, small photos and relatively short videos no longer count towards the free storage quota.

Google hasn't made any formal announcements, leading Picasa users to worry whether something had gone wrong since their storage quota started showing different figures over night, but a Google employee has confirmed the change.

A user asked in the Picasa help pages about the big difference in the amount of space taken up by his photos and videos, going from 56 GB to 27 GB, and Google explained that some images and videos were no longer counted.

"We recently made a change whereby any pictures 800 pixels and under don't count towards used PWA storage. The new GB numbers you're seeing are the result of quota recalculations that were made," a Google employee explained.

"All videos under 15 minutes also don't count towards used PWA storage. This does not affect total GB usage for Gmail," he added.

Photos under 800 pixels wide aren't that great for displaying or printing, but they're adequate for embedding on blogs and websites. If all you need is an online photo host, you shouldn't have to worry about the amount of space available in Picasa ever again.

However, those looking for a more professional product won't be satisfied with a 800 pixels resolution.

However, those using Picasa to store videos, a relatively new feature, have it much better. Anything under 15 minutes does add up to the amount of space used, regardless of its resolution, much like uploading videos to YouTube. Unlike YouTube though, you get to store the file in its original format and size and have more control over it.