Another example: when free high quality (slightly downscaled) photo storage turned into paid after I had used it as backup of almost sll my photos during my android days?

(To be fair, both Dropbox and OneDrive has done the same: offered free storage without specifying a time limit for jumping through some hoops, then IIRC:

- in the Dropbox case: suddenly just introduce a time limit

- in the OneDrive case just tell me one day that they didn't want to do this more and I need to take my data out quickly or pay to avoid losing it )

For google you were not forced to take your data, old data was not counting towards new limit

For me it seems to be.

I have used the free compressed photos option the whole time and one day I was suddenly many many gigabytes over limit.

hard doubt it's bc of old data. It could be a bug in the system, but most probably It's either bc you uploaded from another device/browser or bc of gmail or after the free period ended

But compressed images were free forever until they weren't, right?

nope, it was unlimited compressed for a specified timeframe*(for other phones) and free unlimited compressed forever for pixel 2 to pixel 5(and unlimited uncompressed for og pixel). Google didn't break their promises * Actually it wasn't about timeframe, google afaik didn't say that other smartphones will get unlimited compressed forever, just that it's free for that time

English is not my first language, but I am good enough that I still think I was justified to be (slightly) surprised when they started charging.