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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

#451

Post by baud147258 »

pgt wrote: post #408
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…

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.

the cost for the user to change from one competitor to the next aren't 0

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

#452

Post by t-writescode »

Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote: post #337
t-writescode wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use NextCloud to share albums, too. You can share a whole folder publicly

I have all the photos in a single folder, i would not like to change that, especially because some photos should appear in multiple albums. How do you manage that?

I don’t do anything special for photos appearing in multiple albums. My use-cases don’t align to that.

My whole photo-taking process tends to be:

* take a bunch of pictures

* find the best ones

* further refine the best ones until it’s a reasonable number

* photoshop those to how I want them

* share the narrow list

And most of my photos come from events, so they’re in folders based on events.

If your goal is virtual galleries and avoiding duplication, this is sufficiently different I don’t think I can give suggestions there, I’m sorry

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

#454

Post by jfoster »

I don't think this change is so bad in isolation, but one thing I'm beginning to feel is that Google are removing things & changing propositions so much that at any point in my life, I'm trying to adapt to their newest whim on at least one of their products.

I had purchased a bit of music through Google Music and it was nice. I kept it downloaded on my device, played it whenever I wanted, and it integrated nicely with Google Assistant, as promised. This year, Google decided to migrate all that into YouTube Music. I thought that wouldn't be a problem; just a new name and change of UI, surely? Well, YouTube Music is incessant about nagging you to subscribe. Unless you subscribe it doesn't work well with assistant and won't play without the app open. I only wanted to listen to the music I had already purchased on the same terms on which I had purchased it, though. Luckily, it was just a handful or so of music and they've agreed to refund it. But now I'm still in the situation where I will be looking for something to replace the gap. This is just one example.

At some point, I'm not going to be bothering with Google products anymore. I already feel a moderate bias against using their stuff. I'm switching from Google Cloud to Vercel, for example. I just hope Vercel doesn't get acquired by Google.

I haven't yet done anything about Gmail, Drive, or Photos, but I feel a bit insecure about such important stuff currently being in Google's hands.

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

#456

Post by fernandotakai »

throwaway3699 wrote: post #442
acdha wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People don’t join a service like this intending it to be a static archive. They were told that this was an easy way to automatically save space on your phone and protect your photos in case something happens to your phone, started building a social network with their friends and family, etc. Now the choice is to pay or walk away.

I fail to see what's wrong with either of those options. Switching photos apps is not hard.

and you can easily download all your google photos.

(source: i did it)

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

#457

Post by judge2020 »

Daishiman wrote: post #84

I am actually very much in favor of paying for what I use. Truth is that upfront payment for storage and convenience is a much more sustainable model than subsidizing this through spyware and other services. Also given the amount of storage needed his seems pretty inevitable.

The problem with this is that there’s not a way to pay google $x/year to not see ads and also not be tracked everywhere you go (obviously requiring you allow cross-site google cookies) and/or limit what systems your browsing data is piped to. With this announcement, it’s just more income diversification since search ads might be pulled from them via antitrust.

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

#458

Post by WalterBright »

megablast wrote: post #426
WalterBright wrote: post #316

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…

45 years experience, and your first thought is that they are being stored as a binary blob in a database??

Yes. Binary file formats are common (like Microsoft Outlook, pdf files, etc.), and are very fast to read/write. Text files have to be parsed. I've written lots and lots of dumpers for binary file formats generated by other programs.

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

#459

Post by drstewart »

baud147258 wrote: post #449
drstewart wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really hate that low value, reddit-style political comments like this are becoming more common on HN nowadays.

I don't see what value your comment is bringing either

None, to be fair. But I do like to think pushing back at charged rhetoric will help maintain high quality discussion here.

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

#460

Post by lowlevellimbo »

echelon wrote: post #413
stev0lution wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Will Google start deleting YouTube content that is super long tail and unviewed? Well they added this to their ToS about a year ago: > Terminations by YouTube for Service Changes > YouTube may terminate your access, or your Google account’s access to all or part of the Service if YouTube believes, in its sole discretion, that provision of the Service to you is no longer commercially viable. ( https://news.ycombinat…

That's incredibly telling. Wow.

how is that surprising in any way? is it not expected that they cut costs if they're not making a profit?
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