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Google Photos will end its free unlimited storage in June 2021

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

#171

Post by fletchowns »

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…

It's so annoying that Google strips the geolocation data. What would be the reason for this? It has been frustrating following along with the ticket that goes nowhere for years: https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/80379228

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

#172

Post by [deleted] »

fouronnes3 wrote: post #135
walrus01 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the long term cost of buying something like a 12TB USB3.0 external hard drive and periodically letting it synchronize from your master copies, then unplugging it and storing it at a trusted family member's house is a great deal less than paying for 12TB+ of "cloud" storage indefinitely forever.

Sure, except no drive sync software is as convenient or user friendly as google photos.

[deleted]

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

#173

Post by jcims »

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…

I have one primary collection but I also have probably 30TB of old drives lying around with photos scattered all about. Is there something I can do to mount those drives, grab all image files and then dedupe/catalog them (at least by date)? Ideally this would work with videos as well.

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

#174

Post by traskjd »

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…

Sounds like you should just use Google Photos as it delivers most of that, with perhaps some improvements in 'backing up' outside of GP.

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

#175

Post by anuila »

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.

Sounds like a bad deal, comparatively. Microsoft skips the low-level interfaces but gives you redundancy and usable UIs and services (on top of an API)

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

#176

Post by akmarinov »

shajznnckfke wrote: post #132
cblconfederate wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't they make more by treating their customers as products (though i wouldn't call them customers because they receive no support, whether they pay or not)

How do they make money from giving their users free photo storage? I think the only path for that to be profitable was to grow the username for future subscription revenue.

You agree to have your photos analyzed and used in advertising.

They sell the data to advertisers and make money off of you.

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

#178

Post by kinkrtyavimoodh »

Surprised to see the level of anger here about this.

This is not the usual "Google kills product", it's the type of thing that HN loves to say they would be happy to pay for ("Just give me something that does A B C and doesn't show me ads and I would be happy to pay for it!!!", well I guess until you are actually asked to pay for it).

Also, as a general rule, people should welcome big cos moving away from the "free shit" product model for two reasons—

[1] Self-serving reason: If the product is free, it's more likely to be killed if it doesn't get that much usage or gets a lot of usage and consumes resources but does not synergize with money-making parts of the company.

[2] Industry-serving reason: Big cos can keep offering free shit for way longer than any new player can afford to. Free shit from big cos is a major reason no smaller players can come up with potentially better offerings, because they will need to charge money to be a sustainable business, while big cos can cross-subsidize it. By moving to a paying model, the field is more level, and there is more of an opportunity for smaller players to come up with similar pricing but a better product.

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

#179

Post by bootlooped »

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.

Worth noting that promise has an expiration date though: my Pixel 3XL says "Unlimited storage for full resolution photos & videos uploaded from your Pixel before 2/1/2022". You can find this in the Backup & Sync settings page in the Photos app.

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

#180

Post by bigmattystyles »

Do they extract data from your photos (meta + image recognition) for your user ad targeting profile (and probably the other people in your photos). I always assumed that was the tradeoff in using them to store photos for 'free'. If they do extract data, I wouldn't expect them to stop once they start charging either.
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