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Google Issues Quality Warning for Millions of Google Photos Users

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

#61

Post by Symbiote »

psanford wrote: post #58

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.

I use Syncthing to synchronize between my phone and desktop.

It's a little confusing to set up the first time, but I've had it on this phone for 3 years and not needed to fiddle with it.

(It uses its own protocol.)

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

#62

Post by aoeuhtns »

psanford wrote: post #58

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.

Yup, after years of trying to make nextcloud, syncthing, etc work for my workflow (copy from flat photos folder on device -> flat photos staging folder on backup server, then a cron job organizes it into folders by year/month), I finally resorted to something manual. Termux + rsync on android. Every few days, I run the termux shortcut to rsync a folder, and delete what's copied over from my device. It just works.

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

#63

Post by gruez »

federona wrote: post #46
angrais wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry if this is a stupid question, but if you don't access data often, why not just buy an external HDD of say 10TB or such? Yeah, it's possible that data may fail, but is quite unlikely particular if you're not using it often.

Remote storage, redundancy, and portability. At $5/mo/tb. you can still access any of it anytime you want, you just pay for what you actually download.

shucked hard drives go for around $15/TB on sale. Buy three for redundancy and it's $45/TB. The break-even point for that setup would be 9 months.

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

#64

Post by Gh0stRAT »

tinus_hn wrote: post #45
philips wrote: post #22

I have started to use Microsoft OneDrive along side Google Photos for two reasons. 1. OneDrive also backs up my photos on my Android device in original quality. 2. I have Google Takeout backup to OneDrive quarterly.

Just like a Google account, your Microsoft account can be blocked for any reason and you will have no way to retrieve your files. Keep local backups.

I've never needed to reach out to either for support, but I've heard only negative things about Google's customer service. To the point where I would expect to at least be able to reach someone at Microsoft but have zero hope of ever resolving a problem with my Google account…

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

#65

Post by secfirstmd »

federona wrote: post #33
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…

If you use terabytes of storage on consumer oriented free or nearly free services you are going to get burned sooner or later. Switch to b2 or s3. Your data will be there for a much longer time. b2 costs $5/terabyte. If you don't access this stuff, it's probably at most $10 - $20/mo.

Interesting use case for Sia of Skynet etc. Something like about 3 dollars a terabyte at the moment.

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

#66

Post by secfirstmd »

angrais wrote: post #41
federona wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you use terabytes of storage on consumer oriented free or nearly free services you are going to get burned sooner or later. Switch to b2 or s3. Your data will be there for a much longer time. b2 costs $5/terabyte. If you don't access this stuff, it's probably at most $10 - $20/mo.

Sorry if this is a stupid question, but if you don't access data often, why not just buy an external HDD of say 10TB or such? Yeah, it's possible that data may fail, but is quite unlikely particular if you're not using it often.

Yeh or a cheap Synology NAS or similar. Remotely accessible, raided, simple to setup.

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

#67

Post by duquedeturing »

lathiat wrote: post #51
mrfusion wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Now you can, up to 4TB: “ With Apple One, you can choose a subscription plan that includes 50GB, 200GB, or 2TB of iCloud storage. If you need more iCloud storage, you can buy more for a total of up to 4TB. ”

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201318

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

#68

Post by plantain »

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…

>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 personal account unlimited free storage forever"... but they altered the deal and that storage went away.

That deal was always time limited, and then was periodically extended for years and years until one day it wasn't. It was clearly never 'sold' as forever though.

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

#69

Post by Spivak »

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.

Or you can just spin up Nextcloud, point it at your B2 storage and call it a day.

It really is drop dead simple and you also don’t have to host it yourself. Every hosted provider supports external storages so you’re never locked in with them. And since you’re not actually using any of their storage you can stay in their free tier forever.

I self-host on DO and it works amazingly well.

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

#70

Post by aceazzameen »

I expected shennigans to occur with Google Photos over time, which is why I've been using Dropbox to backup phone photos now. Dropbox immediately syncs to my hard drives at original quality. And while I'm at it, I still backup with Google Photos at a lower quality. Not as a failsafe, but just for that fast ML searching of subjects like, "dog" or whatever. And if I ever lose that search functionality, no big loss.

I would have gladly given Google my money over Dropbox, but Google has become an untrustworthy and unreliable brand in my eyes recently. Plus I still have control over my Dropbox data via hard drive syncing.

Oh and Picasa for local face tagging is still an option! That gem of a software still works. Although in all honesty, I haven't run it in a while so my tag database is extremely out of date.

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