Google quietly cuts free storage to 5GB without a phone number
Google has reduced the free cloud storage for new accounts from 15GB to 5GB unless users provide a phone number. This change affects services like Gmail, Drive, and Photos, but existing accounts remain unaffected. Users can later add a phone number to increase their storage back to 15GB or opt for paid plans for more storage.
- ▪New Google accounts now receive only 5GB of free cloud storage without phone number verification.
- ▪To regain 15GB of storage, users must provide a phone number during account registration or add it later.
- ▪This policy change is part of a security test by Google, aimed at improving account security and data recovery.
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Record
| Original publisher | PCWorld |
| Canonical URL | https://www.pcworld.com/article/3140911/google-quietly-cuts-free-storage-to-5gb-without-a-phone-number.html |
| Publication time | Mon, 18 May 2026 13:59:10 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-18T14:04:56.547Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-18T14:04:56.547Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | METceICQJCxg |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
Rights status (four layers)
WeSearch handling by dimension
| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Updated Google quietly cuts free storage to 5GB without a phone number New Google accounts are now limited to just 5GB of free cloud storage. To unlock the full 15GB, you'll need to give up your phone number. By Hans-Christian Dirscherl Managing Editor, PC-WELT May 18, 2026 6:59 am PDT Image: Lets Design Studio / Shutterstock.com Summary created by Smart Answers AIIn summary:PCWorld reports that Google quietly reduced free storage from 15GB to 5GB for new accounts created without phone number verification.This policy change affects Gmail, Drive, and Photos storage for new users, though existing accounts remain unaffected.Google confirmed this is a security test, with users able to restore full 15GB storage by adding phone verification later.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at PCWorld.
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