Google Issues Quality Warning for Millions of Google Photos Users • Hacker News Board

Re: Google Issues Quality Warning for Millions of Google Photos Users

#51

Post by lathiat » Sat, Feb 27, 2021, 11:08 PM UTC

mrfusion wrote: post #42

jrockway wrote: post #13

I got burned by this. I take 4x5 film photos and stored my library in Google Photos as 80 megapixel TIFF scans. One day, they told me I was out of storage, and that all the files were converted to phone-quality jpegs. They look awful. I got into this situation because I had a few terabytes of free storage that I accumulated while working at Google; there was some deal like "fill out this survey and we'll give your pe…

How to do it on iCloud? Like a backup?

iCloud Photo Library is similar but no compression hijinx - it's always original quality in the cloud and you can choose to store only "high quality" locally on your device to save device space (hilariously, the opposite of Google). You pay for the storage (but you can't get more than 2TB for love nor money).

Re: Google Issues Quality Warning for Millions of Google Photos Users

#52

Post by MikeGale » Sat, Feb 27, 2021, 11:43 PM UTC

The decision making points seem to be known:

  *  Google kills projects at an increasing rate, the warning may be days

  *  Google has in the past destroyed quality images in their care

  *  If you don't pay you have only yourself to blame

Re: Google Issues Quality Warning for Millions of Google Photos Users

#53

Post by linuxhiker » Sat, Feb 27, 2021, 11:50 PM UTC

I removed all images (over 40GB) from Google photos just a week ago. I don't miss it.

Re: Google Issues Quality Warning for Millions of Google Photos Users

#54

Post by toast0 » Sun, Feb 28, 2021, 12:03 AM UTC

ignoramous wrote: post #24

toast0 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They finally stopped emailing me after I figured out they were looking for someone else with my name. They dropped a hint that they were excited about my compiler work at Microsoft; but I've never done compiler work or been employed by Microsoft.

Their loss, toast0! You're one of the most thoughtful, insightful, skillful participant on this little orange site :)

Aww, thanks.

Doesn't mean I'd be a good fit over there; anyway, I've had enough experience with huge companies; don't want to do that again.

Re: Google Issues Quality Warning for Millions of Google Photos Users

#55

Post by gerash » Sun, Feb 28, 2021, 12:09 AM UTC

federona wrote: post #49

jrockway wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not really looking for archival storage or disaster recovery. After all, the 80MP scans are just low-resolution copies of the originals. I have hard drives for local storage. Yes, if my house burns down I lose the scans and the negatives, but I don't care enough to spend money on it. The reason I used Google Photos was for one-click sharing. I could make a link, and viewers could pan and zoom and see all the deta…

It would not be hard maybe a week or two of hacking to make such an interface on top of an object store if you were motivated. A simple php or python app with a time limited key stored in a db of some sort. There though are already open source free apps that do provide user management, etc. If you are looking for an ideal solution, but you have to pay for it with money or time.

It would be a nice exercise but relying on it doesn't make sense to me.

We had to write a text editor in our first semester of our CS undergrad program. I'm not going to use my own text editor in favor of say MS word or Google doc.

Re: Google Issues Quality Warning for Millions of Google Photos Users

#56

Post by gerash » Sun, Feb 28, 2021, 12:26 AM UTC

junon wrote: post #5

smueller1234 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is hiring just fine. (Source: I'm hiring. I work for Google. Also careers.google.com.)

Haven't received my semi-yearly Google recruiting email this year, I was starting to get worried! I'm itching to decline for the fifth time! :)

Oh no, they must be really desperate to hire you.

Re: Google Issues Quality Warning for Millions of Google Photos Users

#57

Post by Aeolun » Sun, Feb 28, 2021, 12:27 AM UTC

prima-facie wrote: post #31

I think none of us is surprised that the free lunch is now over and that this could not last ad infinitum. Google One is a good deal, but if you're not afraid of doing a minimal amount of manual work then there are other storage services out there that offer good price per GB. Most of them are compatible with S3 buckets - Backblaze B2 or Wasabi are good examples. Any sort of contents can be synced to these buckets us…

After all the issues I’ve had with other providers, including self hosting. I’m now just transferring all my photos to B2 with the photosync app. It’s working fantastically well.

I haven’t found a way to get all my google photos out though.

Re: Google Issues Quality Warning for Millions of Google Photos Users

#58

Post by psanford » Sun, Feb 28, 2021, 12:30 AM UTC

Its really frustrating that there's no good, opensource, Android media backup tool. I just want a simple app that will auto upload photos and videos to an https endpoint (or an S3 bucket).

There are a few tools out there but they all seem to have bit rotted to the point where they don't work reliably on modern Android.

Re: Google Issues Quality Warning for Millions of Google Photos Users

#59

Post by federona » Sun, Feb 28, 2021, 12:40 AM UTC

gerash wrote: post #55

federona wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would not be hard maybe a week or two of hacking to make such an interface on top of an object store if you were motivated. A simple php or python app with a time limited key stored in a db of some sort. There though are already open source free apps that do provide user management, etc. If you are looking for an ideal solution, but you have to pay for it with money or time.

It would be a nice exercise but relying on it doesn't make sense to me. We had to write a text editor in our first semester of our CS undergrad program. I'm not going to use my own text editor in favor of say MS word or Google doc.

Your data is secure on b2, it's simply an interface. Code is on github. DB should be dumped and saved to b2 daily. Not really unreliable.

Re: Google Issues Quality Warning for Millions of Google Photos Users

#60

Post by precurse » Sun, Feb 28, 2021, 12:43 AM UTC

Aeolun wrote: post #57

prima-facie wrote: post #31

I think none of us is surprised that the free lunch is now over and that this could not last ad infinitum. Google One is a good deal, but if you're not afraid of doing a minimal amount of manual work then there are other storage services out there that offer good price per GB. Most of them are compatible with S3 buckets - Backblaze B2 or Wasabi are good examples. Any sort of contents can be synced to these buckets us…

After all the issues I’ve had with other providers, including self hosting. I’m now just transferring all my photos to B2 with the photosync app. It’s working fantastically well. I haven’t found a way to get all my google photos out though.

The only way to get the original quality photos is by using Google Takeout. Before Google made changes to Drive, you could use rclone (https://rclone.org/) to sync originals. That no longer seems to be the case, unfortunately.