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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

#101

Post by j7ake »

elmo2you wrote: post #92
nicoburns wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, Google's pricing on storage is more than reasonable. I pay £2.50/month for 200gb of storage which more than covers my lifetimes worth of photos so far (in full res with a fair few RAW photos in there too). And they're not deleting any photos that users already uploaded. I think Google deserve all the criticism they get for shutting down services. But this one seems to have been handled quite well.

> To be fair, Google's pricing on storage is more than reasonable That probably depends, on whether you factor in the profit Google makes from mining your data. That should be subtracted from their operating costs and only then compared to what they charge for the storage. My guess is that they'll make quite a killing on the thing, as a whole. Even besides the morally questionable aspects (of the data mining), consid…

Is google mining photos for profit?

What kind of profits are there to mine data in google photos?

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

#102

Post by Taek »

Isn't this the classic pattern followed by almost all startups? Create a product that loses money and attracts users. Sustain it with VC money until you have a large number of users who are highly dependent on the product. Then switch to profitability, knowing you can do so because you've already hit critical mass and users aren't easily able to switch away.

You don't have to like it, but it is legal and it is how many of the most celebrated startups got to where they are today.

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

#103

Post by mrep »

avisser wrote: post #89
oefrha wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“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?

> What makes you believe Amazon will honor “unlimited” this time round? Because Amazon has an incentive to keep me as a Prime customer (I'll buy more crap on Amazon). Most people don't pay Google a single cent. So it's not that I trust Amazon, it's that the economic model for Amazon including unlimited storage in my Prime membership makes sense. (Note: I wouldn't bet on Amazon staying unlimited for the next 50 years,…

I wouldn't count on it considering they unbundled ad free twitch from prime 2 years ago [0].

[0]: https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/20/17761760/twitch-prime-tur...

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

#104

Post by x87678r »

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…

Not even "able charge higher rates for that service in the future", equally good is just bought out and shut down.

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

#105

Post by tiborsaas »

minikites wrote: post #83
tiborsaas wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

We benefit daily from all sorts of horrors, that's not a justification to keep doing horrors.

That's bit of a hyperbole. How is ML horror?

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

#107

Post by Igelau »

There will probably be a handful of users who go bananas with rage and start blindly uploading everything they can before the cutoff. I have a feeling there will be some very interesting stuff accidentally being uploaded in the coming months, and we will probably hear about some it.

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

#108

Post by mehrdadn »

corobo wrote: post #96
mehrdadn wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like the comic and it's definitely hilarious, and but it's not necessarily an apt comparison. Imagine the same situation with a bank holding your money. Are you paying them? (I assume you're not... I guess if you are, you probably shouldn't be.) Does that mean they're not in the business of storing your money and should be able to just give it away if you don't claim it in a month?

Reading into this beyond what you were intending I'd love for private data to be as regulated as money

Interesting idea... are you sure? Do you want to pay extra fees to transfer it internationally, have to deal with sanctions/etc. depending on where you're sending it, pay taxes on it when you acquire it, have a copy sent to the government if it's over 10KB of data, etc.?

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

#109

Post by upofadown »

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

They are not changing down the service, merely changing the price for it. A price increase after 5 years of service can hardly be considered "bait and switch".

We need to remember that $0 is still a price.

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

#110

Post by throwaway3699 »

j7ake wrote: post #101
elmo2you wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To be fair, Google's pricing on storage is more than reasonable That probably depends, on whether you factor in the profit Google makes from mining your data. That should be subtracted from their operating costs and only then compared to what they charge for the storage. My guess is that they'll make quite a killing on the thing, as a whole. Even besides the morally questionable aspects (of the data mining), consid…

Is google mining photos for profit? What kind of profits are there to mine data in google photos?

Very little. I think training data for image classification is one benefit.

Google conspiracy theories are just HN's preferred sport.

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