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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

#181

Post by mvexel »

derwiki wrote: post #45
Heliosmaster wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it sucks but.. yeah, that's how it works. And that is enabled by VC funded culture, where you have million of dollars invested in companies, which can then offer services at a loss investing in something else (market share, training data, etc.). Using smaller companies which charge honestly for the services they provide is probably more sustainable in the long term.

In this case though, a smaller company might not be around forever. When you’re looking at storing important photos, the service you think will last longest may be best. (I use Flickr, Gphotos and an S3 bucket but I’m paranoid)

Flickr changed hands a couple times, almost went under and is still struggling to stay afloat. So you're right to be paranoid. I have been a paying Flickr Pro user since the beginning of time, but I don't feel that my photos are any 'safer' there than they would be on Google Photos.

Also, Flickr has done an arguably nastier bait and switch when they announced the end of their unlimited free storage. At least Google seems to be willing to keep the photos already uploaded around. For now.

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

#184

Post by idiot900 »

jstummbillig wrote: post #140
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.

Most will agree that the offer is reasonable. But is that good enough, in this case? Should it be legal to front-load your business by promising something, and then going back on that (not because you have to, but because you change your mind)? I feel like it should not, because the competitive advantage you get by offering things for free is incredibly huge. Whenever that gets a business to a place where people will…

> But is that good enough, in this case? Should it be legal to front-load your business by promising something, and then going back on that

Did the user agreement - or even the marketing - at the time this was offered stipulate that unlimited photo storage would continue forever? As a user I never interpreted it that way - there's no free lunch.

You can get your photos out onto your own hardware using Google Takeout easily enough.

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

#185

Post by nickcw »

While we are talking about Google Photos, I'm sure people will be thinking of how to extract their photos from the service.

I'd love to be able to recommend rclone here, but the Google API is just too limited for downloading photos: https://rclone.org/googlephotos/#limitations

Stripping the metadata and the resolution changes is unacceptable. (The resolution change only seems to affect videos for me but others have seen it on photos too).

I know Google engineers will be reading this - please fix the Google Photos API so it can be used to upload and download full quality, unaltered images or videos. I'm certainly getting the feeling that the Google Photos Web app (which is excellent) isn't eating the dog food of the Google Photos API.

In the mean time use Google takeout to extract your images.

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

#187

Post by mattlondon »

asah wrote: post #159

what I want to know: why would storage prices increase when storage costs continue to plummet (and network ingress costs remain cheap due to asymmetric use vs serving) spitballing... - gphotos was free when google wanted the data for training algorithms. They now have the data they need and it's become a cost center. Given Android integration, that amount is substantial. - the paid plans are underperforming, and this…

I expect that the issue is more likely that 99.999% of people are using the service are doing so "normally", but the 0.001% who are not are using disproportionally large amounts of data/abusing the service at the detriment of others etc.

I have no doubt that there are people out there doing shady/dodgy things to abuse the free "unlimited" storage and pumping in huge huge huge amounts of data or have hacked up some crazy system to use it as some sort of hacked-up rsync, using it for bulk image classification instead of spin up their own service etc etc etc

Charging a relatively small fee to high users while leaving it free for the vast majority seems like a fair way of trying to slow down abuse to me - I think they did the same thing with the Google Maps APIs a year or two ago (i.e. turn down the free tier significantly and make it cost a small-but-not-zero amount to stop people abusing it)

I currently pay £1.33 a month for more storage - so like half a starbucks coffee. Seems fair to me considering how many years of photos I have in there.

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

#188

Post by londons_explore »

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 .

Has anyone cracked the "DRM" on this? Can I just install a hacked app and have it think I'm a pixel owner? Does it just use the EXIF headers to identify the device?

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

#189

Post by tchalla »

wongarsu wrote: post #142
save_ferris wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The obvious solution is grandfathering. Google Photos decided to grandfather old photos: only photos uploaded after June 2021 count towards your storage limit. That's nice, but the obvious solution to prevent all this outrage would have been to grandfather in old user accounts: anyone already using Google Photos has no storage limit for compressed images (as before), but new accounts have the new limits. That allows…

> That's nice, but the obvious solution to prevent all this outrage would have been to grandfather in old user accounts: anyone already using Google Photos has no storage limit for compressed images (as before), but new accounts have the new limits. That allows for fast growth with insane offers at the start of the product cycle, while switching to a more profitable model for later users.

The fact that Google didn't do it is another reason why one could call it a bait-n-switch model.

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

#190

Post by griffinkelly »

caf wrote: post #130
griffinkelly wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Their situation of having to pay $24 a year?

My friends have at least 1TB. My one buddy who was the biggest google advocate has 10TB+. He moved all his photos there and deleted them off harddrives etc.
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