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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

#351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> indexes them in a local SQLite DB. I don't really understand this. I've been in computing for 45 years now. Programs come and go. I store files I want to keep in the most generic format practical. Storing a file in some program's special format is not a good plan for reading it 40 years from now. For photos, I store them as jpgs in folders named after the year. Within those folders, there might be sub-folders named…

SQLite is an ubiquitous and well-tested piece of software that is going to stand the test of time and survive the next twenty years. There are very few pieces of software that I am able to praise like that with a clean conscience; SQLite is definitely one of them though. You might find it worthwhile to read e.g. about its memory allocation strategy, or its testing strategy. Also, I don't think that the image files th…

> SQLite is an ubiquitous and well-tested piece of software that is going to stand the test of time and survive the next twenty years.

My timeline is much longer than 20 years. I have family photos going back to the Civil War.

Besides, Wordstar and Wordperfect files used to be ubiquitous. Good luck with those today.

I switched my mail from Outlook to Thunderbird because the former stores the email in some undocumented unreadable binary format. TB stores the mail as text, so I can recover the mail without needing TB. I have mail going back 25 years now. Some of my earlier mail is now lost because, surprise surprise, the mail program no longer works and the data is stored in a proprietary format.

I unzipped all my old file archives a few years back out of concern that some of the old DOS archive software would disappear.

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

#352

For those who are considering or already self-hosting, I'm genuinely curious whether it's worth the time/effort vs privacy comfort of mind? Google One prices seem reasonable (except the lack of middle tiers). Even the price aside, they also claim to not use data for ad targeting, and I personally haven't seen ads based on my media content (but obviously I'm just one anecdote). I feel like the only real concern around…

Google Photos was so many leaps and bounds ahead of what I was doing before to save my smartphone pictures, I'm not even thinking of leaving.

Automatic backup, dead simple albums, easy sharing, browsing on web and mobile. It may be the most satisfied I am with any Google product. Gmail, Drive, Calendar and Maps are probably the other top-tier ones. There are untold numbers of mid-tier and crap-tier ones.

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

#353
post #94
post #5

Well, luckily Google One is quite cheap. You can get 100 GB for 20 euro per year to get started and even the 2 TB plan is cheaper than for example Dropbox and iCloud when paid annually.

Free, however, meant that photos could stay online potentially past the end of someone's life. Now the dead will have their memories & photos that they've shared vanish. This is a dark day.

Surely, if someone has died, you'd need to export their photos from any online services anyways. I don't really see the issue here.

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

#354

Just FYI Amazon Photos has unlimited photo storage for prime users.

I wouldn't trust Amazon's consumer offerings, after they removed the unlimited offering from Amazon (Cloud) Drive [1], and continued to remove API access after that [2].

Not only that, but I have quite a few files that were corrupted on Amazon Drive, so I wouldn't trust them for long-term photo storage either, unless the photos were also backed up to other services.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14511935

[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/d0jg8w/your_in...

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

#355
post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

What is the racist undertone to "sunset?" Currently I assume sunset is just a play on sunset being the end of the day, which is a pretty universal experience.

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

#356
Flickr pro is $5 a month (billed annually) for unlimited original quality storage.

Google photos is $3 for 200GB...$10 a month for 2 TB. So if you have more than 200GB, Flickr is the way to go.

Additionally, I don't see any mention of Google privacy, but I'm pretty confident Flickr doesn't mine my data for advertisers.

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

#357

For those who are considering or already self-hosting, I'm genuinely curious whether it's worth the time/effort vs privacy comfort of mind? Google One prices seem reasonable (except the lack of middle tiers). Even the price aside, they also claim to not use data for ad targeting, and I personally haven't seen ads based on my media content (but obviously I'm just one anecdote). I feel like the only real concern around…

> For those who are considering or already self-hosting, I'm genuinely curious whether it's worth the time/effort vs privacy comfort of mind? People who are time-poor can consider a turn-key self-hosted appliance like a Synology NAS. I've heard some good reviews about their Moments app: https://www.synology.com/en-us/dsm/feature/moments

That does seem pretty nice for self hosting. But isn't a physical device in your house just as vulnerable to fire, water, etc damage, in which case you want another cloud solution anyways?

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

#358
post #307

I pay for Google Photos and you should too if you care about your photos. I've used Dropbox, Apple Photos and Google Photos. Google Photos is hands down the best photo application for individuals. Mostly because its face/object/place/whatever recognition is the best of its kind. Dropbox: they are ignoring the photos needs from users. They focus on "enterprise cloud storage" and "workplace sharing". Apple: I love the…

Do you actually use that? Maybe it's just because I have few photos, but I always thought it was a massive gimmick. If I wanted to see photos from a specific vacation, I just remember when it happened, or look up the location in the geotagging thing. No ML needed. I've never once wished I could see all my photos of "dog on beach" in one place.

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

#359

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…

> Surprised to see the level of anger here about this.

Anger could be due to:

1) Kill competition by offering product at a loss.

2) Once competition is dead and people are invested in the product and ecosystem, start charging.

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