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Ask HN: Alternatives to Google Photos?

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Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to Google Photos?

#81

Post by vzaliva »

leetrout wrote: post #34

https://www.smugmug.com/ and https://www.flickr.com/ (Same parent company now). Chris MacAskill founded it with his son. Pretty solid company, seems like. https://mixergy.com/interviews/smugmug-chris-macaskill-inter...

I would never use or recommend Flickr. They lied to me. As premium user (for many yars) the promise to me was that photos uploaded will be kept free forever as long as the service exists. Even if I stop paying. Then they went back on that. They may have a very good reasons, but the trust was broken.

Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to Google Photos?

#82

Post by Brajeshwar »

I have been looking to get rid of Google Photos from my toolset for a different reason. I don't mind paying for valuable services. I have been on the 2TB Family plan of Google One for a while, as I thought I would use it as the backup for my Photos.

The second reason was that I could have a single photo collective for the family. Apple Photos do not make it easy to have an all-shared family photo pool.

Unfortunately, it is tough to manage the storage between drive and photos. There is no easy way to keep the ones you like and the ones you want to delete to save space. There is no easy way to escape Google Subscription hell once you get in.

And they have hidden the one thing I love about Google Photos -- ForYou. If you have kids, you will love this one. https://photos.google.com/foryou

I'm just an amateur and family photographer, but doing that for the past 20+ years has gotten me quite many photos. I'm on the highest additional storage possible along with the Apple One subscription, and I'm struggling to find a better storage solution for my photos. I have few ideas, but I'm on the lookout for choices.

Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to Google Photos?

#83

Post by choward »

vishnumohandas wrote: post #27

Hey, over the last year we've been building ente[1], an end-to-end encrypted alternative to Google Photos. We have shipped open-source[2] web and mobile apps that have preserved 180,000+ files. Apart from cross-device sync, you can share your albums end-to-end encrypted, and filter photos by location and time. We recently had a "successful" launch on r/degoogle[3]. We wanted to Show HN after incorporating the feedbac…

I can't tell if this is self hosted or not. All I see is a centralized option. If not self hostable, a user still can't guarantee that this doesn't just end up being as bad as google photos. There are plenty of companies like this that provide an alternative to the mainstream then sell out. Really, the only person you can trust is yourself at the end of the day.

Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to Google Photos?

#84

Post by Superblazer »

smolyeet wrote: post #77
chomp wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not, however for some of us, there was an implicit “I let you datamine my images, you host them” relationship. Having to pay google tips the scales, so why not spend your $2 on a more privacy oriented service?

Because the people willing to pay Google for their service don't mind the use of their pictures to better their services elsewhere. Google didn't get to be where it was without us , and the fight for privacy isn't worth it for some (most) people. Alternatives usually involve self hosting, trusting a privacy focused service , or not doing it at all. It's tiring. I respect the effort , but In a lot of ways it feels lik…

The fight for privacy is absolutely worth it. Those people have no idea about what they are getting into, they don't know anything. That is not something to base upon.

Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to Google Photos?

#85

Post by fomine3 »

ping_pong wrote: post #50

To be honest, $2/month isn't that unreasonable from a useful service. I would definitely class Google Photos as useful, especially its ability to search for pictures. I personally use iCloud, and back everything to a Synology.

I'm fine my photos are managed by Google, so I signed up 100GB plan of Google One. Google Opinion Rewards provides me enough money to fulfill the annual fee.

Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to Google Photos?

#86

Post by durovo »

hanniabu wrote: post #63
mtlynch wrote: post #22

If you're willing to self-host, Photoprism[0] is pretty nice and easy to get up and running. It has the flavor of Google Photos, but it's definitely a step down in UX. One of the features I really love about Google Photos is the ability to jump quickly through time. Like if I'm looking for a photo I took around June 2018, I can get to it in I didn't realize what a magical feature it is until I tried looking for it wi…

Do you know if they have a portable option so i can keep it on my external drive that i have all my media on?

Yes, I have it installed locally. Haven't played around with it much though, features like grouping by face were not present the last time I checked. Honestly, Google Photos is just too convenient. Photoprism is a good backup option though.

Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to Google Photos?

#87

Post by sp332 »

choward wrote: post #83
vishnumohandas wrote: post #27

Hey, over the last year we've been building ente[1], an end-to-end encrypted alternative to Google Photos. We have shipped open-source[2] web and mobile apps that have preserved 180,000+ files. Apart from cross-device sync, you can share your albums end-to-end encrypted, and filter photos by location and time. We recently had a "successful" launch on r/degoogle[3]. We wanted to Show HN after incorporating the feedbac…

I can't tell if this is self hosted or not. All I see is a centralized option. If not self hostable, a user still can't guarantee that this doesn't just end up being as bad as google photos. There are plenty of companies like this that provide an alternative to the mainstream then sell out. Really, the only person you can trust is yourself at the end of the day.

Down in the reddit comments it says it is not self-hosted because of limited "engineering bandwidth".

Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to Google Photos?

#88

Post by justicezyx »

If Google keeps a service around, it must be that the service is popular. And you can be sure that the technical features behind the service is well beyond any competitors.

Trust me, Google is not good at product design, that's because they trade it with unmatched technical capabilities.

Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to Google Photos?

#89

Post by Aeolun »

sp332 wrote: post #87
choward wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't tell if this is self hosted or not. All I see is a centralized option. If not self hostable, a user still can't guarantee that this doesn't just end up being as bad as google photos. There are plenty of companies like this that provide an alternative to the mainstream then sell out. Really, the only person you can trust is yourself at the end of the day.

Down in the reddit comments it says it is not self-hosted because of limited "engineering bandwidth".

That seems counterintuitive.

Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to Google Photos?

#90

Post by Aeolun »

mceachen wrote: post #3

You're certainly welcome to try PhotoStructure! It's got very robust de-duplication, supports portable libraries (so you can automatically sweep your photos scattered across many drives and computers into a single timestamped folder structure), and a novel UI showing a random sampled view of your library. There's also an active forum for both support and to discuss what and how new features are built out. https://pho…

Oh. Deduplication across all drives! Consider me interested. Will try this out later.
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