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Google Photos hooked users with free unlimited storage. Now that's changing

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Re: Google Photos hooked users with free unlimited storage. Now that's changing

#71

Post by JorgeGT »

loughnane wrote: post #58
JorgeGT wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm giving Amazon Photos a try, since they offer unlimited high quality storage with Prime. I will appreciate if someone shares their opinion about this service.

Have used it but this sounds a lot like kicking the can down the road. Don’t be surprised if/when Amazon does the same thing and/or just lets photos Languish. I encourage a self-hosted solution with backups. There are many, some super easy for non-tech folk to use (synology for example)

I am indeed self-hosting, but just a Raspberry Pi+HD. The Google/Amazon Photos is the backup/convenience. Since I want off-site backups in case something happens in my apartment, when/if Amazon goes this road I'll probably rent some general purpose storage in the cloud.

Re: Google Photos hooked users with free unlimited storage. Now that's changing

#72

Post by mysterydip »

izacus wrote: post #59
ruph123 wrote: post #54

Can we talk about alternatives? I am not a Google Photos user but I struggle to find a good privacy-aware or self-hosting solution. Currently I am hosting my photos on my nextcloud instance. But the support from the iOS app for photos is really bad and there seems to be no good webdav photo viewer on iOS. So what about Piwigo [1] then? They allow self-hosting (does it run well on a raspi?) and have a pretty reasonabl…

I've bought a Synology NAS which comes with a builtin Synology Moments application. It's pretty much a self-hosted Google Photos (including web gallery, sharing and mobile app which autobackups directly to your NAS). I still use Google Photos for convenience sake, but having a safe copy owned by myself on harddrives I own by myself is still worthwhile. And setup was very easy - couple of clicks on web UI to enable th…

Which model did you get? I've thought about one for a while, but the prices seem more entry level business than personal.

Re: Google Photos hooked users with free unlimited storage. Now that's changing

#73

Post by cwhiz »

tiborsaas wrote: post #43
cwhiz wrote: post #2

Thanks for giving us all the machine learning data. We no longer need your services.

But users also benefit from it. You can search for the contents of the images in your private gallery.

“private”

Re: Google Photos hooked users with free unlimited storage. Now that's changing

#74

Post by griffinkelly »

part1of2 wrote: post #5

> Anil Sabharwal, Google Photos’ then-head, said in a blog post when the service launched in 2015. “And when we say a lifetime of memories, we really mean it.” Most of Google’s product strategy has been bait & switch, and I saythat with all due to respect to the engineers. It’s the leaders who make these decisions

I'm an avid photographer and had a few friends who were hooked on google photos, I've always been skeptical because I know how pricey storage can get and figured this would always happen. I'm glad I didn't move all my photos onto Google Photos like my friends, I don't envy their situation now.

Re: Google Photos hooked users with free unlimited storage. Now that's changing

#75

Post by Nasrudith »

save_ferris wrote: post #61
part1of2 wrote: post #5

> Anil Sabharwal, Google Photos’ then-head, said in a blog post when the service launched in 2015. “And when we say a lifetime of memories, we really mean it.” Most of Google’s product strategy has been bait & switch, and I saythat with all due to respect to the engineers. It’s the leaders who make these decisions

You could argue that all hyper growth “build it and they will come” types of companies do this bait and switch. It’s inherent to the startup culture that emphasizes capturing users above earning profit in the early stages of a company. Think about how many VC-backed companies offer services at discounted rates today in hopes of being able charge higher rates for that service in the future. This is endemic to tech gen…

That isn't just a tech thing either. Look at "new and improved formulas" or other companies which after they develop a good reputation piss it away cutting corners.

Google has the ultimate smartass retort to justify it to critics especially if they are on Capital Hill. "I thought it was considered unfair competition now to provide something others can't now because we are apparently 'too big' now."

Re: Google Photos hooked users with free unlimited storage. Now that's changing

#76

Post by zombieprocess »

abtom wrote: post #56
cbg0 wrote: post #33

For anyone looking for other options: I've been very pleased with Microsoft's Onedrive offering; I pay $70/year for access to all the Office apps plus 1TB of storage and their family plan is $100/year and supports up to 6 people, with 1TB of storage per account.

Any idea if I can buy the family plan and use 6TB for myself?

Sure can. The Microsoft plan allows you to ungoogle yourself.

Get a @your-domain-name email which comes with the same corporate outlook with calendar integration and everything else that comes with it.

Also, 1 TB.

---

Another good option is Apple - they charge reasonably 0.99$ for 50 GB

---

Finally, dropbox is really good too and I have been using them since the beginning.

Re: Google Photos hooked users with free unlimited storage. Now that's changing

#77

Post by zombieprocess »

Sebb767 wrote: post #36

I honestly can't see the outrage here. Sure, they've closed their free tier, but they keep up the promise for Pixel owners and do not count images previously uploaded. That's really more than one can ask for in something they get for free .

Thats not how promises work.

Re: Google Photos hooked users with free unlimited storage. Now that's changing

#78

Post by baq »

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #69
cinntaile wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the thing though, you don't really get it for free do you? You just pay with your privacy and data instead.

To whom do you believe google has disclosed private user photos?

they're so big disclosing those photos to their algorithms is questionable privacy-wise.

Re: Google Photos hooked users with free unlimited storage. Now that's changing

#79

Post by JorgeGT »

oefrha wrote: post #57
JorgeGT wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm giving Amazon Photos a try, since they offer unlimited high quality storage with Prime. I will appreciate if someone shares their opinion about this service.

“Unlimited”, until it is limited. Amazon already bait-and-switched on unlimited Amazon Cloud Drive storage. Microsoft, too, on OneDrive, before Amazon. Now Google. What makes you believe Amazon will honor “unlimited” this time round?

Oh, nothing. But until they do, why pay Google, if I already pay Prime?

Re: Google Photos hooked users with free unlimited storage. Now that's changing

#80

Post by Someone »

arnon wrote: post #29
pfortuny wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well it is like an infinite order of magnitude of a difference when PROMISED otherwise.

For most people, 15GB can very well be a lifetime.

15 GB/30,000 days ≈ ½ MB/day. You can’t type that, but that would be a single photo every week or so, or about 4,000 over a lifetime. Doable, but it would require quite a few habitual changes for most.
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