Google Cuts Free Storage: Only 5GB for New Accounts

For years, the 15GB of free space has been Google's banner against the 5GB offered by other direct competitors. A solid certainty that seemed immune to time, but today it wavers under the weight of new silent policies. Mountain View has begun distributing a radical change in the activation process for new profiles: the default storage for Gmail, Drive, and Photos officially drops to 5GB.

The change was not accompanied by the usual announcements on official blogs or celebratory tweets. It has been a covert maneuver, initially intercepted on Reddit and later confirmed by variations in the technical support pages around March 18. While before the wording guaranteed 15GB unconditionally, now the text reads "up to 15GB". The difference, seemingly slight, hides a precise constraint: to unlock the full quota it has become mandatory to link a phone number during setup. Without this step, the user remains confined to a partition identical to that of iCloud, for example.

Google asks for digital identity in exchange for gigabytes

Behind this decision is not just a question of saving server resources, but a strategy aimed at limiting the proliferation of multiple accounts. Creating a new email address is an instant operation, but obtaining a real phone number requires a more complex bureaucratic and physical step. By tying the 15GB to phone verification, Google effectively implements an anti-duplication measure that makes the use of disposable profiles less convenient to circumvent storage limits.

At the moment, it seems that this novelty is a regional test. This explains why some users can still view the old threshold without providing additional data, but the direction seems to be set globally. It is interesting to note how this restriction comes immediately after the expansion of plans for AI Pro subscribers, who saw their storage increase from 1TB to 5TB.

Mountain View's message appears clear: while storage for those who pay increases significantly, the margins for "free" users shrink or become conditional on the provision of deeper personal data. With the end of unlimited uploads to Google Photos already behind us, this new move will force many to manage their backups much more prudently or, inevitably, subscribe to a Google One plan. The era of unconditional generosity in the cloud seems to be definitively coming to an end.