Google quietly changed its official support page wording from "15 GB" to "up to 15 GB" back in March 2026 — weeks before anyone in the tech community noticed. That two-word edit turned out to be the first signal of something bigger: new Google accounts may now only get 5GB of free storage by default, with the full 15GB locked behind phone number verification.
This isn't just a storage policy tweak. It's a shift in what "free" actually means when you sign up for the most widely used email and cloud service on the planet. The anti-abuse justification is real, but the privacy implications of tying a phone number to your Google identity run deeper than the headlines suggest, especially for developers and anyone running multiple accounts for legitimate professional reasons.
Is handing over your phone number a reasonable price for 15GB of cloud storage you used to get automatically, or is this the start of something bigger?
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