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Less than a month to go before Google breaks links to Google+ Picasa albums

philip.greenspun.com

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Re: Less than a month to go before Google breaks links to Google+ Picasa albums

#11

Post by pizza »

Y_Y wrote: post #5
ravenstine wrote: post #2

I wouldn't depend on Google for anything. Maybe self-hosting needs to be made easier for the average person? The web has so much bandwidth now that there's no reason outside of potential security issues that people can't be posting more of their own stuff(like a web ).

Self-hosting has become shamefully easy now with Docker Hub and cheap VPSen in the "cloud". It really is a one-liner to spin up a new service on your server nowadays.

I mean, it is a one-liner, but only if you know what to do with that line -- linking to a URL in a message or putting a URL in the URL bar is the most complex one-liner you can reasonably require non-tech types to do, in my experience.

Technology that aims to serve that audience should be reasonably usable for that audience.

Re: Less than a month to go before Google breaks links to Google+ Picasa albums

#12

Post by ravenstine »

scarmig wrote: post #4
ravenstine wrote: post #2

I wouldn't depend on Google for anything. Maybe self-hosting needs to be made easier for the average person? The web has so much bandwidth now that there's no reason outside of potential security issues that people can't be posting more of their own stuff(like a web ).

It's far easier, more scalable, and more secure now than it's ever been, and people quite simply don't want it. I wish it weren't so, but people prefer staying inside walled gardens to homesteading.

They do, but I think there's some potential demand for it.

For instance, I want to be able to host my own files without having to make some sort of deal with my ISP. Although I've never had a problem serving requests directly from my computer, it's usually against the rules of ISPs. With a regular internet connection, I should be able to more easily store files on my own hardware and be able to share them with people as easily as I could with Instagram. Maybe there could even be an always-on hardware device that integrates in an open way with third parties that can serve those files, but ultimately those files live on that hardware and can be designated their own domains for URL resolution. Peer-to-peer and Cloudflare support could come with it out-of-the-box to mitigate load issues.

Meh, maybe nobody wants anything like that. I still like the idea.

Re: Less than a month to go before Google breaks links to Google+ Picasa albums

#13

Post by peterwwillis »

As George Lopez would say, Why you crying? You chose to use someone's free platform to host and display your pictures with virtually no work on your part, and now you don't get the free lunch anymore.

These scenarios are actually useful. They train people to use solutions that are open and portable, which will help them respond to unexpected disasters in the future. Use a self-hosted CMS to build, manage and publish your content so you can re-publish your content somewhere else.

Re: Less than a month to go before Google breaks links to Google+ Picasa albums

#14

Post by gf263 »

Y_Y wrote: post #5
ravenstine wrote: post #2

I wouldn't depend on Google for anything. Maybe self-hosting needs to be made easier for the average person? The web has so much bandwidth now that there's no reason outside of potential security issues that people can't be posting more of their own stuff(like a web ).

Self-hosting has become shamefully easy now with Docker Hub and cheap VPSen in the "cloud". It really is a one-liner to spin up a new service on your server nowadays.

tell that to my mom

Re: Less than a month to go before Google breaks links to Google+ Picasa albums

#15

Post by benatkin »

Google may not be much worse than other FANGs, but the way it pretends to be friendly to open source and free culture communities and co-opts them is nasty.

"Despite illusions in 2008–2009 that it was a fair player, Google is now trashing free culture by making all the Picasa Web images in Creative Commons vanish from the web.

In fact, users and albums are often forced to "migrate" to Google Plus, without telling them that any Creative Commons marking will be irreversibly destroyed in the process. There's no way to mark Creative Commons images on Google Plus. There's also no way to search or browse Picasa Web by license, apparently (the feature used to exist in 2009)."

https://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Picasa

Re: Less than a month to go before Google breaks links to Google+ Picasa albums

#16

Post by icebraining »

scarmig wrote: post #8

It's interesting that Amazon's approach of building products and killing them off if they don't improve the bottom line earns praise, while Google's similar one endlessly pisses people off.

Amazon's are probably almost not used at all, whereas Google kills off products that still have plenty of users, even if not by the standards of Search or Gmail.

Re: Less than a month to go before Google breaks links to Google+ Picasa albums

#17

Post by untog »

CamelCaseName wrote: post #6

In Google's defense: 1. This was announced over 3 years ago [0] 2. Photos/Videos uploaded to Picasa were transferred to Google Photos automatically (comments/tags/captions will be lost though) [1] 3. Picasa was originally built in 2002! (bought by Google in 2004) -- Perhaps Picasa had a time and place? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picasa#Discontinuation [1] https://picasa.google.com/

Yeah, I'm often one to criticise Google, but an entirely free cloud-based photo album was never going to be around forever. If you are very concerned with keeping an online record for all time you really shouldn't be depending on free stuff like Picasa.

Re: Less than a month to go before Google breaks links to Google+ Picasa albums

#18

Post by saidajigumi »

scarmig wrote: post #8

It's interesting that Amazon's approach of building products and killing them off if they don't improve the bottom line earns praise, while Google's similar one endlessly pisses people off.

I wonder about the lifetimes and user engagement between examples from Amazon and Google. It's interesting that my off-the-cuff impression is that Google gets into hot water here by letting its experiments 1) run for a long time, 2) acquire a lot of users because "hey, it's free" and 3) sometimes suck the air out of a product segment because #2 (see: Google Reader). Likewise, my impression of Amazon's similar experiments are that they're cut short at a much younger age, with lesser engagement. Now I'm very curious: does the data actually back up those impressions?

Re: Less than a month to go before Google breaks links to Google+ Picasa albums

#19

Post by matwood »

pgrote wrote: post #10

Really miss picasa. I know the world is moving away from tagging your photos with descriptive words, but I still do it. As with any Picasa related subject: Does anyone have a viable alternative desktop software that allows tagging of photos, some mild editing and allowing photos to be kept in folders that are the albums.

It's not free, but Lightroom is the canonical software for this purpose.

Re: Less than a month to go before Google breaks links to Google+ Picasa albums

#20

Post by kristianc »

scarmig wrote: post #8

It's interesting that Amazon's approach of building products and killing them off if they don't improve the bottom line earns praise, while Google's similar one endlessly pisses people off.

It's probably because by and large Amazon kills physical products and Google kills services.

If someone buys a Fire Phone and it gets discontinued - well, products getting discontinued is part of life and it doesn't (usually) affect the usage of the one you have.

If Google builds a web service, then that service has the chance to grow to 50m / 100m users before deciding that it is not worth supporting. Law of large numbers says of those 50/100m a non-trivial proportion will invest substantial time in it and get pissed off when they have to make alternative plans.

If Amazon killed Prime Video or Audible, I bet you’d see a pretty huge outcry.

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