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

#381

Post by chrisjc » Wed, Nov 11, 2020, 10:40 PM UTC

anuila wrote: post #155

chrisjc wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're an Amazon Prime user you can use their photo app that still has unlimited, full-res uploads. https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-Photos/b?node=13234696011 >Amazon Photos offers unlimited, full-resolution photo storage, plus 5 GB video storage for Prime members. Printing from amazon isn't too bad either.

Videos aren't free though and I feel that those 5 GB will start filling up pretty soon, which means you'll have to start paying anyway.

I'm not sure videos were unlimited on google either though. So I'm not sure you're losing a feature there.

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

#382

Post by tomasreimers » Wed, Nov 11, 2020, 10:41 PM UTC

For those of us that already pay for personal GSuite, does anyone know if we ALSO need a Google One subscription now? Or if the GSuite space will be enough?

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

#383

Post by akmarinov » Wed, Nov 11, 2020, 10:42 PM UTC

shajznnckfke wrote: post #349

akmarinov wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You agree to have your photos analyzed and used in advertising. They sell the data to advertisers and make money off of you.

As an advertiser how do I buy user data from Google photos?

Set up a campaign and target a particular group

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

#384

Post by ehsankia » Wed, Nov 11, 2020, 10:45 PM UTC

murgindrag wrote: post #317

ehsankia wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Photos is a billion user product, how many of those have they deprecated? The disabled account thing may be a real concern, but statistically it's more rare than getting into a plane crash, yet we still fly planes. Also, if anything, monetizing the product and allowing it to be self-sustaining financially makes it far less likely to be killed. I'd much rather pay for a product that brings me value, since now I'm a re…

Umm.... no. The disabled account thing is pretty common. Perhaps it's safer than flying a GA Cessna 172 in a storm, or being an air force test pilot. But probably not even that. And as for killed services with a billion users, well, free unlimited Google Photos is now a killed service. As for killed paid services, Google Play Music, Nest Secure, Google Photos Print, Google Audio Ads, and a ton of others.

> The disabled account thing is pretty common

Not really, it's mostly frequency illusion hanging out on HN, but considering Google has multi-billion users, those dozen or so incidents are nothing in comparison.

> free unlimited Google Photos

That's a feature, not a service. And name me one other company that provides unlimited free storage.

> Google Play Music

Technically migrated, all your data and purchases are still there

> Nest Secure

Hardware is a completely different ball game. The existing users can still keep using their hardware just fine. Every single device eventually stops being sold.

> Google Photos Print

Again, a feature. You didn't lose any data. You can still print photos using other services.

> Google Audio Ads

Not familiar, but I see it's still around? Do you have a link to the announcement of it being killed?

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

#385

Post by depr » Wed, Nov 11, 2020, 10:48 PM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #351

phoe-krk wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 undocumente…

Wordperfect files can be opened in MSFT Word ;)

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

#386

Post by rektide » Wed, Nov 11, 2020, 10:49 PM UTC

Hamuko wrote: post #353

rektide wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I was rather expecting that our presence online didn't disappear as soon as we went inactive. I don't want my message board messages to all get erased when I croak. Same goes for the pictures I share with others online too.

Not sure how this is not-an-issue for so many people. Thanks for the reply though. I really don't understand how I'm so far downvoted for what seems like the beginning of a new era where information starts to delete itself, whereas before it survived.

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

#387

Post by subsaharancoder » Wed, Nov 11, 2020, 10:50 PM UTC

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…

Another alternative is Perkeep (formerly known as Camlistore) https://perkeep.org/ and there's even a tool to extract your pics from Google Photos https://github.com/perkeep/gphotos-cdp and move them to Perkeep.

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

#388

Post by stjohnswarts » Wed, Nov 11, 2020, 10:52 PM UTC

ZainRiz wrote: post #339

echelon wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm actually glad to see this. Unlimited storage is unsustainable. I don't like seeing things tied to advertising revenue. It's not comfortable from a privacy perspective, and it's certainly not competitive for other players wanting to enter the space without the dollars from Google's huge advertising funnel/marketplace/ecosystem. You'll notice Google also started to clamp down on Gmail trash storage space, and I'll…

Seems like hard drives aren't getting cheaper by that much of a margin nowadays [0] Combine this with growing usage, this might make their projected costs much higher than expected [0] https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-cost-per-gigabyte/

Technology finds a way...

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

#389

Post by WalterBright » Wed, Nov 11, 2020, 10:54 PM UTC

akerl_ wrote: post #378

WalterBright wrote: post #329

> Google Photos will start charging for storage once more than 15 gigs on the account have been used. 15 gigs of photos is nothing. > 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. Gak. Randomly deleting your photos. No way I'm relying on cloud storage. I'm a very long term investor. I received a letter a few months ago from a mut…

I can’t tell if this is just hyperbole, but if an account is inactive and unpaid for 2 years, I don’t see why they’d be expected to just sit on that data forever. I can’t imagine being 5-10 years behind on things that “need attending to”. What is a definition of “thing that needs attending to” that can sustain a 5-10 year delay?

My 20 year old self would have agreed with you. But you'll have to trust me when I say that as you get older, your perception of time changes drastically.

> What is a definition of “thing that needs attending to” that can sustain a 5-10 year delay?

Unopened mail, things I need to organize in case of a tax audit, broken things I was going to fix, things that simply need to be put away, things I can't decide whether to keep or throw away, etc.

My father's sophisticated organizational method was the "chronological sort", aka the most recent stuff was thrown on top of the pile. The bottom slowly gets compressed into a rock-like substance.

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

#390

Post by stjohnswarts » Wed, Nov 11, 2020, 10:55 PM UTC

mdoms wrote: post #312

wolco2 wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> In a year they will start charging for gmail. > In two or three they will start charging for search. Great! They should.

They will still comb through your gmail/google docs for ad related data to serve up to you and enlarge you customer profile. Please don't be under any illusion that won't continue. They're just adding a price to extract even more money from you, not just as data source, but now as a paying customer + data source for advertisers.