Reaching Picasa's Photo Storage Limit

I've finally reached Picasa's photo storage limit. I knew the day would come because the amount of content I have on Multiply far and away exceeds Picasa's basic limit of 1 gig, but I thought I'd bump up against the limit and see what they say so I could tell everyone moving their stuff to Google products about it. Here's the message I just received as I was transferring an album of photos from Multiply to PIcasa (Google's photo product):

Whoops! You're out of space. You are currently using 100% of your 1 GB quota for photos. Upgrade storage

Photos are stored in your Picasa Web Albums account and are included in your 1 GB free quota for photos. Additional storage you purchase is shared between several Google products and is in addition to your free quota. Learn more

I had already decided that I would upgrade once I hit the limit. I checked out prices previously and they're comparable to what I've already been paying here in Multiplyland. Do I clicked on the "Upgrade storage" link. The first thing that greeted me was a review of the upgrade options. I had forgotten that Picasa's storage limit is lower than the other products'. Here's the Free plan:

Free

5 GB of Drive (0% used)
10 GB of Gmail (21% used)
1 GB of Picasa (99% used)

So, essentially, because I'd reached 100% (or nearly) in one of those areas, I have to upgrade to add more data to that area. I assume I could keep adding in the other areas without upgrading. But I want to transfer my photos, so I look through the rest of the options.

25 GB

$2.49 / Month

25 GB for Drive and Picasa

Bonus: Your Gmail storage will be upgraded to  25 GB.

There's also a 100 gig option for $5/month. But I don't think I'll need that much space. So I opt for the 25 gig option. It looks like you can't pay on a yearly basis. So I'll be paying $2.49 a month until I cancel. Here's the note on the site: "You will be automatically charged $2.49 USD every month starting October 16, 2012 until you cancel your subscription."

Checkout is done through Google Wallet, which is yet another Google product. I'd signed up for it earlier (in order to buy some Lego's for the Old Firehouse that I was making) so it defaulted directly to that. I don't know if you'd be given other options if you haven't already added this service. Feel free to add that info to the comments if you find out the answer on that one. 

Now that I've purchased my storage, it shows me what my current plan is, it shows the next plan up, which I'd seen before, which is 100 gig. And then it shows a plan I hadn't seen before (for 200 gig) and it shows one more option which apparently goes up into several Terabytes. Yowza! 

I was able to start uploading photos to my Picasa storage again right away. There was no lag time. I haven't received an email update on my purchase yet, though. Hmmm, I even refreshed a couple of times and checked my spam folder. So all in all I'd say that the process was pretty painless, pretty cheap, but I'm a little dismayed that an alert email wasn't sent right away to confirm my purchase (even though I know it went through since I have photos uploading right now.) I also don't know what happens if I don't pay up some month. Do I lose all my content? Some? How do they decide what would stay and what I'd lose? I'll be on the alert for answers to these questions.