Great time for FLOSS federated project pixelfeld: https://the-federation.info/pixelfed
Pixelfed's more like a crappier version of Instagram. It's hardly a substitute for Google Photos.
Google Photos will end its free unlimited storage in June 2021
271–280 of 649 posts
Re: Google Photos will end its free unlimited storage in June 2021
#272Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Zero doubt? Wow, wish I had such confidence to make claims about things I know little about.
Each photo's geolocation data is stored. Of course.
It is shown in the UI, as well as indexed so you can search by location.
For example, I can search for "photos of dogs in Portland" and it'll show all the pics of dogs I've taken in Portland.
Re: Google Photos will end its free unlimited storage in June 2021
#273Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
As andybak says, almost certainly privacy. It's very easy for an unsophisticated user to share photos that, for example, effectively show where they live (or where someone else lives). I believe Facebook strips geo data as well. (A service like Flickr does not although I assume there is a switch somewhere that tells it to.)
Wouldn't it be easy for Google to only strip the geolocation data if you are not the owner of the photo though?
Re: Google Photos will end its free unlimited storage in June 2021
#274Earlier quoted context omitted.
I remember the frantic meetings at Yahoo when Gmail killed the market for storage upgrades. They caused an immense amount of work (more so than affecting revenue and costs; the premium quotas at least in Europe didn't generate much revenue and the quotas were there more out of fear of excessive use). A lot of adoption of Google services was driven by not having to worry about quotas. Making quotas a concern again wil…
> Making quotas a concern again will pave the way for people to start competing with them by offering cheaper storage Are they also going to have a lucrative ad business subsidizing the servers and staff? Not to totally take away from your point (and interesting story) which is still valid. Just a reminder of what we've gotten for 'free' for so long often is a consequence of other business models working in conjuncti…
>Are they also going to have a lucrative ad business subsidizing the servers and staff?
Re: Google Photos will end its free unlimited storage in June 2021
#275I guess the free lunch is finally over. For ~15 years (since the launch of GMail) Google has differentiated itself on storage. Both in terms of products offerings and in terms of company image. To me it signifies a change in the market. They don't feel like they currently need to compete with Apple or Microsoft on any of these fronts right now. The market is pretty stable and there are more battlefields ahead. So tim…
I think it's more that cost per TB for HDD and NAND scaling started stalling a few years ago.
Re: Google Photos will end its free unlimited storage in June 2021
#276Re: Google Photos will end its free unlimited storage in June 2021
#277I think Google is missing a clear opportunity to compete with Instagram and the like. Google Photos is nearly default on just about every new and recent android phone in the world and its "partner" sharing feature (limited to just 1 partner) resembles a private IG-like share experience. Imagine having that breadth of user base already active in your app but not simply adding a public network around it (with adequate…
Social media like Instagram has actually shown that people appreciate having to explicitly upload select images to their online persona. It's simpler and it also removes overhead like "wait, which photos can people see again?" Facebook had to build a complicated "view your profile as X" system early on just to address this trepidation.
You can have both. Private by default but a browsable list of explicitly public albums.
Re: Google Photos will end its free unlimited storage in June 2021
#278Time 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.
I've been pleased with PhotoSweeper on my Mac. I started with the free Lite version, then went ahead and bought the full version.
I set it at the highest match setting. If you adjust it to a lower setting, it will match things where somebody is looking at the camera versus looking away.
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/photosweeper/id463362050?mt=12 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/photosweeper-lite/id506150103?...
PS: I was going to say that they have a PC version but it looks like the 3rd entry for me on DuckDuckGo is actually spam that says there is a PC version, then feeds you to programs that are "like PhotoSweeper". I wouldn't download those.
Re: Google Photos will end its free unlimited storage in June 2021
#279Earlier quoted context omitted.
As andybak says, almost certainly privacy. It's very easy for an unsophisticated user to share photos that, for example, effectively show where they live (or where someone else lives). I believe Facebook strips geo data as well. (A service like Flickr does not although I assume there is a switch somewhere that tells it to.)
Wouldn't it be easy for Google to only strip the geolocation data if you are not the owner of the photo though?
One scenario is you're at a party at someone's house. If you post a captioned photo from the party that's geotagged, you're identifying where they live.
Re: Google Photos will end its free unlimited storage in June 2021
#280Damn, and I set this up on my parents phones as an easy way for them to back up all the photos they take that 'just works'
Looks like I have some bad news for them...