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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

#111

Post by hetspookjee »

jjav wrote: post #109
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 hope you had local copies! All cloud storage should be treated as ephemeral (some more than others, particularly google). It will change terms or go away at some point. Only local storage owned by you is actually, well, owned by you. If it is something that matters, keep it locally.

Local storage doesn't mean a lot these days anymore. Good luck with your DRM'd products when the validating server goes offline.

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

#112

Post by jjav »

hetspookjee wrote: post #111
jjav wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope you had local copies! All cloud storage should be treated as ephemeral (some more than others, particularly google). It will change terms or go away at some point. Only local storage owned by you is actually, well, owned by you. If it is something that matters, keep it locally.

Local storage doesn't mean a lot these days anymore. Good luck with your DRM'd products when the validating server goes offline.

That is something else to be aware of, you're right.

I only buy non-DRM content. Ideally, DVDs or CDs I'll rip myself (then the physical media is a second layer of backup).

Most of my storage volume is my own photography though. RAW files take a lot of space.

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

#113

Post by larusso »

kccqzy wrote: post #92
echelon wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple shouldn't be looking at what you're storing and replacing it with something different. Nor should Google. We shouldn't tolerate this business from any megacorp.

They surely can. iTunes Match is not marketed as a music backup service. Its raison d'être is to match your own music to music available in the iTunes Store. It's in the name.

Just too bad when it matches the wrong version of an album or song. Happened to me and I already deleted my original mp3. So you need to rip the CD again. But I think it makes sense to match content and only keep the best version on the servers.

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

#114

Post by bryanrasmussen »

deepsun wrote: post #94
iscrewyou wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still miss google reader and Picasa. I don’t think I will ever get over those two losses.

Any good replacements? I mean, if people really miss Picasa (and I personally know several) -- it's worthwhile to reimplement it and make money.

>it's worthwhile to reimplement it and make money.

no it's not, because if you do (and look to be getting significant growth) Google will just start it up again and drive you out of business, run it for a year or two afterwards for free and then kill it.

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

#116

Post by katbyte »

duquedeturing wrote: post #67
lathiat wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Well that’s annoying, I don’t want to pay for all the other services I never use for 4tb

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

#117

Post by freeone3000 »

dimator wrote: post #95
iscrewyou wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still miss google reader and Picasa. I don’t think I will ever get over those two losses.

I realize google reader was a popular app, especially among the hn crowd. But there's been how many years since reader? Why hasn't anyone duplicated exactly the reader experience? The truth is that you miss the world in which google reader could exist. Free, unfettered, unabridged access to full length articles in a highly consumable format is not a thing that most publishers are behind now. They want your eyes on th…

I use feedly. The UI is closest to what I liked about reader.

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

#118

Post by astrange »

deepsun wrote: post #94
iscrewyou wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still miss google reader and Picasa. I don’t think I will ever get over those two losses.

Any good replacements? I mean, if people really miss Picasa (and I personally know several) -- it's worthwhile to reimplement it and make money.

RSS readers existed before Google Reader and they still exist after it.

https://netnewswire.com

https://feedly.com

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

#119

Post by astrange »

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! :)

They were the only company who'd call me at work. Unfortunately every time they'd try they'd have some kind of sex scandal or employee harassment story the next day so I never called back.

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

#120

Post by wlesieutre »

iscrewyou wrote: post #82
mcguire wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just like all of Google's other products?

I still miss google reader and Picasa. I don’t think I will ever get over those two losses.

Once upon a time I volunteered on an Eagle Scout project, scanning boxes of old photos to digitize the whole collection.

We thought "Google is a big tech company, this should stick around." Got about 10 years out of it, which strikes me as pretty average for a tech product, but not great for a photo archive. Hell of a lot shorter than "4x6s in a shoebox."

At least that was a desktop app and they still have their data. Hopefully they were able to find a new way to organize them.

But I'm becoming more and more convinced that the only good way to store data is in an organized tree of folders, with any management software being a veiwer UI into that structure. App inevitably goes away? Replace it with the next one. Some things just need to have longer lifespans than software projects.

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