Google Photos will end its free unlimited storage in June 2021 • Hacker News Board

Re: Google Photos will end its free unlimited storage in June 2021

#161

Post by DoreenMichele » Wed, Nov 11, 2020, 7:55 PM UTC

duskwuff wrote: post #151

DoreenMichele wrote: post #120

Google is also introducing a new policy of deleting data from inactive accounts that haven’t been logged in to for at least two years. A little bit of good news, IMO. Next, they need to do like Reddit and start making "dead" account names available for re-use. (Something Reddit does for sub-reddits and which Google seems to not do for, say, BlogSpot.) Edit: I say this as someone with old, dead google accounts I will…

Allowing email addresses to be reused is a huge security and privacy problem. It means that any email which was still being sent to the old address -- including account recovery emails -- becomes accessible to the new owner of the email address. Deleting data from "dead" accounts is fine and good. But they need to stay dead, not come back to life.

I'm talking about recycling BlogSpot addresses. Currently, it's common to see a BlogSpot blog with a single post from ten years ago and it means all the best URLs are gone and will never be available.

Re: Google Photos will end its free unlimited storage in June 2021

#162

Post by williamtwild » Wed, Nov 11, 2020, 7:55 PM UTC

plorg wrote: post #88

hackily wrote: post #18

> If you have a Pixel 1-5, photos uploaded from that device won’t be impacted. Photos and videos uploaded in High quality from that device will continue to be exempt from this change, even after June 1, 2021. All good things come to an end, but at least they still honor the promise they made with the Pixel phones.

It may just be cleaner to write it this way because the guarantee was different between generations, but the choice of "High quality" looks intentional. Pixel 1-3 (I don't remember 4, but definitely not 4a) were guaranteed unlimited storage at "full resolution", and for subsequent models the guarantee was changed to "high quality". I have a Pixel 3, and this feature was important to me when I purchased the phone.

Same for me. It was part of the selling point of the 3. I should have known better since it was Google.

Re: Google Photos will end its free unlimited storage in June 2021

#163

Post by mholt » Wed, Nov 11, 2020, 7:55 PM UTC

flashgordon wrote: post #150

mholt wrote: post #46

Time to dust off my side project, Timeliner [1] which downloads your Google Photos (and other content from various services) and indexes them in a local SQLite DB. Then after backing them up locally, I won't feel bad about deleting them from the cloud later to free up space. I've been using Timeliner for a while but need to update it. New maintainers welcomed, if you're interested! (One major "oof" is that the Google…

This is awesome. What would it take to hook up the storage to say block storage (say EBS or GCS) so that we can have more durabality interms of storage instead of having to manage a NAS at home? For me there have been a whole bunch of needs (photos, videos, docs) where storage has been the major stumbling block.

You can use rclone to copy the files back up to any cloud you want. Timelines are just files and folders.

Re: Google Photos will end its free unlimited storage in June 2021

#164

Post by pqoek » Wed, Nov 11, 2020, 7:56 PM UTC

Hell, I guess this was doomed to happen, but I did not think of it when I transitioned to Google Photos. Dropbox has been pretty bad for syncing photos from my device, so I started using both, now I'm thinking that maybe I should just use some Apple service for it since I only own Apple devices. What do people use to sync their photos?

Re: Google Photos will end its free unlimited storage in June 2021

#165

Post by singhkays » Wed, Nov 11, 2020, 7:56 PM UTC

pnutjam wrote: post #109

liminal wrote: post #47

I've found Microsoft Office to be the best deal for online storage. $70/year gets you a bunch of useful apps and 1TB of storage, or $100 year provides 1TB for up to 6 accounts. Nothing else seems to come close.

I can get a 1TB storage server from Time4vps for about $60 (they charge in euros). That gives me the ability to store stuff with sftp, rsync, or more full featured backup solutions like borgbackup.

Sure but do you get to use office apps as well? I assume majority of the cost in the Office deal is the cost of the full Office suite

Re: Google Photos will end its free unlimited storage in June 2021

#166

Post by aaomidi » Wed, Nov 11, 2020, 7:57 PM UTC

actuator wrote: post #61

mittermayr wrote: post #44

While I instinctively knew Google is not to trust with the word "free", especially since "you're the product" isn't applicable as easily here as with other products, I still decided to thoroughly test Photos for a long while to see if they'd introduce some limits. They are a corporate entity out to make money (and externally pressured to make more quarter by quarter), so I fully get it. But for Photos, it almost seem…

I don't get this honestly. None of us will like if our photos are used for ads as they are deeply personal. How do you think this should be monetized then?

You know how costco deeply subsidizes it's chicken and hotdog to incentivize people to use them?

That's how. Not every single thing you offer needs to be profitable. Losing money on some stuff is worth it if it increases brand loyalty.

Re: Google Photos will end its free unlimited storage in June 2021

#167

Post by duskwuff » Wed, Nov 11, 2020, 7:57 PM UTC

perryizgr8 wrote: post #24

The search function in Google photos is really the main factor why I'd want to continue using it. I wish there were a photo search index I could run on my own hdd.

Apple's Photos app has a decent search-by-contents feature. Even better, the analysis is all on-device -- it isn't server-side, and doesn't rely on you uploading your photos to iCloud.

Re: Google Photos will end its free unlimited storage in June 2021

#168

Post by singhkays » Wed, Nov 11, 2020, 7:57 PM UTC

thekyle wrote: post #108

Personally I like this new direction Google is going. I am someone who much prefers to pay a few bucks a month over having my data used for ad targeting. Ideally I'd like to see them make all Google platforms ad-free for Google One subscribers.

> few bucks a month over having my data used for ad targeting

not seeing this promise anywhere with this announcement though

Re: Google Photos will end its free unlimited storage in June 2021

#169

Post by pqoek » Wed, Nov 11, 2020, 7:57 PM UTC

warrentr wrote: post #154

Has anyone found a good family friendly alternative? In particular I would really like to: - Pay for the service (sustainable/trustworthy business model) - Be able to very tightly control access to albums as I really don't want kid photos ending up on facebook or similar due to crazy aunt kathy (in google photos anyone with access can add anyone else and until recently there was no way to remove people) - Ability to…

> - Ability to require a full/proper login for guests (no hard-to-guess urls as security)

I believe all services provide that, because both have their upsides and downsides

Re: Google Photos will end its free unlimited storage in June 2021

#170

Post by grishka » Wed, Nov 11, 2020, 7:57 PM UTC

plorg wrote: post #88

hackily wrote: post #18

> If you have a Pixel 1-5, photos uploaded from that device won’t be impacted. Photos and videos uploaded in High quality from that device will continue to be exempt from this change, even after June 1, 2021. All good things come to an end, but at least they still honor the promise they made with the Pixel phones.

It may just be cleaner to write it this way because the guarantee was different between generations, but the choice of "High quality" looks intentional. Pixel 1-3 (I don't remember 4, but definitely not 4a) were guaranteed unlimited storage at "full resolution", and for subsequent models the guarantee was changed to "high quality". I have a Pixel 3, and this feature was important to me when I purchased the phone.

Pixel 1 is unique in that they forgot to put a deadline into the deal. They didn't make the same mistake for the next ones. And, yes, unlimited original quality still works for me as of today, but I'm not taking any chances with deleting my local copies.

Though, to be honest, Pixel 1 is absolutely horrendous when it comes to replacing the battery. Even if you did manage to open it without breaking the screen, good luck putting it back together. I did a poor job on mine, part of the bottom bezel didn't stick and there are weird green glitches on the screen when you press on that part. This thing really wasn't designed to ever come apart.

So, anyway, I have a Pixel 4a on its way to me, and I'm paying 50€/month for a server with much more disk space than I know what to do with. Are there any decent self-hosted replacements for Google Photos?