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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

#261

Post by Octopuz »

ianhowson wrote: post #56
speedgoose wrote: post #4

Tldr: low quality but unlimited storage is expensive, so it will go away in June. However everything uploaded before will not use space for some time. High quality storage has never been unlimited so no changes. A Google Photos storage policy update I would love to read is some guarantee that I can download a backup of my photos if my Google account gets blocked for some reasons.

Keep in mind that the photos you download from Takeout have the GPS data stripped out, so (sibling commentors) already have an incomplete backup. PhotoSync ( https://www.photosync-app.com/home.html ) lets you do a good-old-fashioned dump to a NAS.

Does PhotoSync keep the GPS/location data when downloading from Google Photos? Their website is not very specific and slightly outdated (Picasa login anyone?)

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

#262

Post by andromeduck »

wolco2 wrote: post #226
kinkrtyavimoodh wrote: post #178

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 s…

I think offering something for free and unlimited for 10 years and suddenly charging for it seems like bait and switch. If you have an existing free unlimited plan they should grandfather that in. In a year they will start charging for gmail. In two or three they will start charging for search.

Digital rent control is a terrible idea.

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

#263

Post by Normille »

majora2007 wrote: post #152
mittermayr wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Google Photos interface itself isn't that big of a product (I think), if you can lose some of the sharing features, I guess it'd be quite an easy app to make that can be run off a v-server or Amazon at considerably less long-term trouble. The big big issue is the seamless auto-upload from phone to Google Photos, that's the fantastic feature that locked me in.

MegaUpload and Plex offer both of those things. Using Plex allows you to control the full storage and interface, then you can sync those to a cloud service or keep on a HDD yourself.

There's also Yandex Disc [0] which is still offering unlimited photo uploads from mobile devices. Although it wouldn't surprise me if they followed Google's lead on this and curtailed their offering as well. As they seem to pretty much mirror everything else Google does.

Yandex Disc also has an AI which allows you to search for objects within your photos.

[0]https://yandex.com/promo/disk/unlim

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

#264

Post by Snitch-Thursday »

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.

For the 'I take pictures on my phone, poof its on my computer' needs, I replaced Onedrive Camera Upload with a Syncthing folder and haven't had to look back.

Onedrive is of course a different product than Google Photos, and the last time I used Google Photos, Google Now was still a left-swipe sidebar, so YMMV.

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

#265

Post by wizzwizz4 »

three_seagrass wrote: post #257
jwr wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, perhaps apart from the fact that you are giving your photos to the company that makes money on targeted advertising and invests bajillions into AI technologies that learn from data. Some of us are distinctly uncomfortable with that, especially given what has been done to Gmail — your mail is being fed to machines and used to build an advertising profile for you.

>especially given what has been done to Gmail — your mail is being fed to machines and used to build an advertising profile for you. Google has not mined emails in GMail for ad targeting for years now: https://blog.google/products/gmail/g-suite-gains-traction-in...

They have, however, let (apparently) arbitrary third-parties have access to said emails.

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

#267

Post by ciarannolan »

irrational wrote: post #256
andybak wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironic as it sounds - privacy?

Ironic indeed. I can’t help but wonder if Google stores the geolocation data privately where only they can access it for their own data mining uses before removing it from the photos.

I would start with the assumption that Google is collecting and storing every single possible data point about every single thing you share with them, including this. I have zero doubt that they store this info privately for their own use.

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

#268

Post by plorg »

grishka wrote: post #170
plorg wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 lu…

If you click through the blog post to the support page listing for Pixels they do suggest that Pixel 1s will continue to get unlimited uploads, and Pixel 3s will get them until the original expiration of Jan 31, 2022. The expiration for Pixel 2 will have already expired.

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

#269

Post by ru552 »

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…

I have all of this with amazon. Included with Amazon prime.

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

#270

Post by Rebelgecko »

ttam wrote: post #231
gabagool wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What term should be used instead?

sunset?

Perhaps I'm having getting whooshed here, but sunset has a racist connotation just as bad as "grandfathering" (or arguably worse). Plus it means something different. When I hear that I product it being sunset, to me that means 100% dead, even for preexisting users
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