In short, if it’s free, there’s usually a catch...
Google Photos hooked users with free unlimited storage. Now that's changing
161–170 of 256 posts
Re: Google Photos hooked users with free unlimited storage. Now that's changing
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's the thing though, you don't really get it for free do you? You just pay with your privacy and data instead.
To whom do you believe google has disclosed private user photos?
In the US there is "no reasonable expectation of privacy" for data voluntarily given to third-parties [0]
US government agencies can simply ask for such data, and companies can just pass it along, all without even evoking any of the countless surveillance laws [1]
Re: Google Photos hooked users with free unlimited storage. Now that's changing
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
> To be fair, Google's pricing on storage is more than reasonable That probably depends, on whether you factor in the profit Google makes from mining your data. That should be subtracted from their operating costs and only then compared to what they charge for the storage. My guess is that they'll make quite a killing on the thing, as a whole. Even besides the morally questionable aspects (of the data mining), consid…
Is google mining photos for profit? What kind of profits are there to mine data in google photos?
Facial recognition for who else is in the picture. They've never had a good social graph like Facebook. This is one way to construct one.
Re: Google Photos hooked users with free unlimited storage. Now that's changing
#164I pay $99/year for the consumer 2TB plan. It lets us store full size stills and videos. To put it in perspective, one family night out at a seafood restaurant costs about that much, and a couple of frappuccinos a month can add up to that much in a year. Then again, a 5TB hard drive is, what? $119 or less? It's hard to figure the sweet spot, but the convenience factor is huge.
Yeah, and Google Photos you can easily access no-nonsense from your phone, your friend’s house, multiple laptops, etc.
That's the main thing for me, and probably for the majority of people who don't want to or can't set up a home storage system with backups and redundancy etc.
Re: Google Photos hooked users with free unlimited storage. Now that's changing
#165How likely could GMail follow the same path ?
Given that Gmail does not have, and never has had, infinite free storage it seems quite hard for it to follow the same path... It's already there. Specifically, Gmail had 1GB quota at launch. These days you have 15GB combined across Drive, Gmail and Photos for free, and paid plans if you need more space.
Back in the day Gmail was growing its free space nonstop. No longer.
https://news-cdn.softpedia.com/images/news2/Undo-Gmail-2.png
Re: Google Photos hooked users with free unlimited storage. Now that's changing
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
You could argue that all hyper growth “build it and they will come” types of companies do this bait and switch. It’s inherent to the startup culture that emphasizes capturing users above earning profit in the early stages of a company. Think about how many VC-backed companies offer services at discounted rates today in hopes of being able charge higher rates for that service in the future. This is endemic to tech gen…
The obvious solution is grandfathering. Google Photos decided to grandfather old photos: only photos uploaded after June 2021 count towards your storage limit. That's nice, but the obvious solution to prevent all this outrage would have been to grandfather in old user accounts: anyone already using Google Photos has no storage limit for compressed images (as before), but new accounts have the new limits. That allows…
Considering the market penetration of Google Photos and the lack of any compelling reason to switch, I doubt that grandfathering would have accomplished what they're trying to do here. Phone companies also eventually kick people off of grandfathered plans, or change them so substantially that they are no longer recognizable. For example, I remember the AT&T unlimited plan that came in the early days of the iPhone. It started out reasonably cheap but eventually became extremely expensive.
Re: Google Photos hooked users with free unlimited storage. Now that's changing
#167[deleted]
Re: Google Photos hooked users with free unlimited storage. Now that's changing
#168How likely could GMail follow the same path ?
Given that Gmail does not have, and never has had, infinite free storage it seems quite hard for it to follow the same path... It's already there. Specifically, Gmail had 1GB quota at launch. These days you have 15GB combined across Drive, Gmail and Photos for free, and paid plans if you need more space.
Didn’t they use to have a counter on the home page telling you how many millions of megabytes were still available for gmail storage?
Re: Google Photos hooked users with free unlimited storage. Now that's changing
#169> Anil Sabharwal, Google Photos’ then-head, said in a blog post when the service launched in 2015. “And when we say a lifetime of memories, we really mean it.” Most of Google’s product strategy has been bait & switch, and I saythat with all due to respect to the engineers. It’s the leaders who make these decisions
To be fair, Google's pricing on storage is more than reasonable. I pay £2.50/month for 200gb of storage which more than covers my lifetimes worth of photos so far (in full res with a fair few RAW photos in there too). And they're not deleting any photos that users already uploaded. I think Google deserve all the criticism they get for shutting down services. But this one seems to have been handled quite well.
Google's pricing on storage is more than reasonable FOR NOW!
Re: Google Photos hooked users with free unlimited storage. Now that's changing
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
they're so big disclosing those photos to their algorithms is questionable privacy-wise.
what is the privacy loss outcome that you are suggesting has happened as a result of photos being disclosed to algorithms?
use your imagination. Sheesh this is such a boring line of questioning that borders on disingenuous and obtuse for a social news site that caters to people in AdTech.