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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

#401

Post by hyperdimension »

ehsankia wrote: post #384
murgindrag wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sti…

Just for something to think about regarding the disabled/locked accounts, remember that we only hear about those who have the means/social-media following to make a Big Deal about it or those with the right friends inside of Google who might be able to nudge the proper team to take a second look, and the only stories that happen to pop up are "success stories" if I can call them that. As far as I can see, the average person is screwed should The Algorithm (blessed be thy name) decide against them.

Given the scale of Google and how many people have access to the Internet today, I'd generally be willing to bet that there are many, many others with the same fate but who simply can't get enough traction behind them for anyone (let alone Google) to care enough.

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

#403

Post by ISL »

speedgoose wrote: post #52
ISL wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way to guarantee the latter is to make your own periodic backups.

But then these is almost no point to use Google Photos.

The instant sync from my phone is pretty rad and my primary use-case.

For real backups, I manually sync the phone's images/movies/dngs to my home photo archive.

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

#404

Post by acdha »

vvoyer wrote: 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…

> I've come to realize is that, with a very big photo library, no iPhone or Macbook can analyze them all and share the results with all my devices. Only a server can analyze 10,000+ pictures, identify faces, organize by date. All in a slick and fast UI.

How big is your photo library? I have about 100GB and that’s all worked perfectly well on iOS/macOS for many years - even on the old 2010 MacBook Air I used until it stopped getting security updates.

You can see a difference in quality but it’s a judgement call: Google Photos definitely indexes more things in pictures but it also has a much higher false positive rate - for example, it took until 2018-19 before searching for “cat” didn’t have two pages of results for my dog before any actual cats.

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

#405

Post by nybble41 »

dontfiremepls wrote: post #376
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…

Because it's anti-competitive dumping. The dirty secret of SV is that it's an enormous dumping scheme: burn billions of dollars of money to offer 'free' or goods and services, gain a dominant position in the market by driving the honestly priced competition into the ground, then jack up the prices and fleece the customers. Uber is the poster boy of this strategy, but it's not the only one. The honest approach would b…

> The honest approach would be to either grandfather existing customers at the promised price point ($0)…

This is exactly what they're doing. According to the announcement, photos uploaded in "high quality" (the previous free/unmetered tier) before June 1, 2021 will remain exempt from the storage quota. Only new photos uploaded after June 1, 2021 count against the quota. So not only are all the existing photos and videos grandfathered in, you even have seven whole months after the change was announced to upload new material which will also be grandfathered in.

Google is also very good about data migration; you can download all your photos and videos along with a wealth of other account data in reasonably open formats via Google Takeout and migrate it wherever you wish.

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

#406

Post by Fej »

jl6 wrote: post #224
Fej wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YouTube allows free video uploads and ingests an incredible amount of content every day. Most of that content won't make any money, or just pennies, and yet they're storing it for free. They're not running out of space. In retrospect, it's not surprising that they're ending the unlimited free ride. Most (all?) of the major photo hosting sites ended their unlimited free plans ages ago. Clearly it is not sustainable fr…

For all we know, YouTube may be haemorrhaging money and they just haven’t figured out a way of charging for storage - yet.

YouTube generates $15b in revenue on ads, plus YouTube Premium memberships [1] and so the cost of storing and serving all of the data would also have to total in the billions, after paying ad revenue to creators as well as other costs. That could be the case, although if they were taking a substantial loss it's unlikely they would hold on for as long as they have.

YouTube also has the benefit of having monopoly power over its market - to their credit, no one else, ever, has had a platform where an independent video creator could start with a handful of viewers and build up to millions. But since they have all of the creators already, and starting a competitor is extremely capital-intensive, there aren't any competitors at anything near their scale. For the most part the usual way to find other YouTube creators is YouTube, via their recommendation algorithm. There is a significant lock-in effect.

Since they have monopoly power, they should be able to find ways to monetize their platform, even if potentially contentious. They recently turned on mid-roll ads on all videos longer than 8 minutes (unless the creator opts out) [2] so it's not like they're out of ideas.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/3/21121207/youtube-google-al...

[2] https://9to5google.com/2020/07/10/youtube-mid-roll-ads-short...

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

#407

Post by dontfiremepls »

nybble41 wrote: post #405
dontfiremepls wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's anti-competitive dumping. The dirty secret of SV is that it's an enormous dumping scheme: burn billions of dollars of money to offer 'free' or goods and services, gain a dominant position in the market by driving the honestly priced competition into the ground, then jack up the prices and fleece the customers. Uber is the poster boy of this strategy, but it's not the only one. The honest approach would b…

> The honest approach would be to either grandfather existing customers at the promised price point ($0)… This is exactly what they're doing. According to the announcement, photos uploaded in "high quality" (the previous free/unmetered tier) before June 1, 2021 will remain exempt from the storage quota. Only new photos uploaded after June 1, 2021 count against the quota. So not only are all the existing photos and vi…

We are going to lawyer this, aren't we? The service was promised for free, not per photo storage. The expectation is that the service will continue to be free. From what you're saying, (most of) the future use of the service, which consists of uploading and storing new photos, will be charged.

Velvet gloves dumping.

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

#408

Post by pgt »

dontfiremepls wrote: post #376
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…

Because it's anti-competitive dumping. The dirty secret of SV is that it's an enormous dumping scheme: burn billions of dollars of money to offer 'free' or goods and services, gain a dominant position in the market by driving the honestly priced competition into the ground, then jack up the prices and fleece the customers. Uber is the poster boy of this strategy, but it's not the only one. The honest approach would b…

This seems like a fallacy. VC subsidies benefit consumers until they run out of money or raise prices. As long as the market remains free, there will be new entrants. The problem is regulation that keeps competitors out. In some cases Big Co. lobbies for this regulation, but often it is government that kills competition by attempting to tax said Big Co., or adds expensive compliance.

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

#409

Post by toiletfuneral »

nybble41 wrote: post #405
dontfiremepls wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's anti-competitive dumping. The dirty secret of SV is that it's an enormous dumping scheme: burn billions of dollars of money to offer 'free' or goods and services, gain a dominant position in the market by driving the honestly priced competition into the ground, then jack up the prices and fleece the customers. Uber is the poster boy of this strategy, but it's not the only one. The honest approach would b…

> The honest approach would be to either grandfather existing customers at the promised price point ($0)… This is exactly what they're doing. According to the announcement, photos uploaded in "high quality" (the previous free/unmetered tier) before June 1, 2021 will remain exempt from the storage quota. Only new photos uploaded after June 1, 2021 count against the quota. So not only are all the existing photos and vi…

but they definitely KEEP copies of all your photos after you leave, that didn't feel great to me

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

#410

Post by havetocharge »

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…

There's a lot of anger just because 'Google'. Whatever reasons provided that would not be appropriate for others will seem okay when applied to Google.
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