Photo storage is worth paying for. But just not at Google.
www.smugmug.com
Feel free to suggest others.
Google Photos will end its free unlimited storage in June 2021
321–330 of 649 posts
Re: Google Photos will end its free unlimited storage in June 2021
#322Earlier quoted context omitted.
They're still an ad company at the end of the day. Now they're going to charge you and advertise to you. Win win for them.
Photos doesn't show ads or allow your photos to be used for ad targeting.
You don't think some team at Google is using photo metadata for ads? There's plenty of value prop in pushing different ads to me if you know that I'm on vacation based on location metadata, or knowing that I buy new shoes and take pics of them every 2 months in order to push me shoe ads at that cadence. I'd be astonished if that isn't the case today or won't be tomorrow.
Re: Google Photos will end its free unlimited storage in June 2021
#323Time to dust off my side project, Timeliner [1] which downloads your Google Photos (and other content from various services) and indexes them in a local SQLite DB. Then after backing them up locally, I won't feel bad about deleting them from the cloud later to free up space. I've been using Timeliner for a while but need to update it. New maintainers welcomed, if you're interested! (One major "oof" is that the Google…
> indexes them in a local SQLite DB. I don't really understand this. I've been in computing for 45 years now. Programs come and go. I store files I want to keep in the most generic format practical. Storing a file in some program's special format is not a good plan for reading it 40 years from now. For photos, I store them as jpgs in folders named after the year. Within those folders, there might be sub-folders named…
Metadata is more useful with older photos. Right now it’s obvious who’s in them, but in 40 years being able to just put names to faces can be difficult.
Re: Google Photos will end its free unlimited storage in June 2021
#324Time to dust off my side project, Timeliner [1] which downloads your Google Photos (and other content from various services) and indexes them in a local SQLite DB. Then after backing them up locally, I won't feel bad about deleting them from the cloud later to free up space. I've been using Timeliner for a while but need to update it. New maintainers welcomed, if you're interested! (One major "oof" is that the Google…
> indexes them in a local SQLite DB. I don't really understand this. I've been in computing for 45 years now. Programs come and go. I store files I want to keep in the most generic format practical. Storing a file in some program's special format is not a good plan for reading it 40 years from now. For photos, I store them as jpgs in folders named after the year. Within those folders, there might be sub-folders named…
TBF SQLite format is also extremely unlikely to become unreadable: https://www.sqlite.org/fileformat2.html
Re: Google Photos will end its free unlimited storage in June 2021
#325Time to dust off my side project, Timeliner [1] which downloads your Google Photos (and other content from various services) and indexes them in a local SQLite DB. Then after backing them up locally, I won't feel bad about deleting them from the cloud later to free up space. I've been using Timeliner for a while but need to update it. New maintainers welcomed, if you're interested! (One major "oof" is that the Google…
> indexes them in a local SQLite DB. I don't really understand this. I've been in computing for 45 years now. Programs come and go. I store files I want to keep in the most generic format practical. Storing a file in some program's special format is not a good plan for reading it 40 years from now. For photos, I store them as jpgs in folders named after the year. Within those folders, there might be sub-folders named…
SQLite is an ubiquitous and well-tested piece of software that is going to stand the test of time and survive the next twenty years. There are very few pieces of software that I am able to praise like that with a clean conscience; SQLite is definitely one of them though. You might find it worthwhile to read e.g. about its memory allocation strategy, or its testing strategy.
Also, I don't think that the image files themselves are stored in the SQLite DB file; likely just their indices and metadata.
Re: Google Photos will end its free unlimited storage in June 2021
#326Earlier quoted context omitted.
For now
Unfortunately there is no thing in the world that is proof from change, especially things you aren't paying for. If you have a problem with it you can use any of the other free photo upload services that will accept 15GB+ of your photos and will guarantee that free service for life.
I don't have a problem with it. This is a good thing for the industry that Google can't continue to offer unrealistic and unsustainable products for free. They set expectations that were hard to meet.
I think this serves as a warning and reminder to users.
Re: Google Photos will end its free unlimited storage in June 2021
#327Any open source software for displaying and organizing photos as albums?
I already take care of the uploading (I have a big nextcloud server with multiple copies), however there is no affordance provided for collecting albums and sharing them.
And just to clarify, an album to me it's just a list of paths to photos and the ability to generate password protected links that I can share with family members. Oh, right, the photos shared through this way should hide all exif tags to prevent leakage.
Re: Google Photos will end its free unlimited storage in June 2021
#328Earlier quoted context omitted.
The only option that I know of is Dropbox. they're a classic player in this space with an acceptable track record (afaict). They have a nice app with auto-uploading of pictures, they dump them into a single folder with zero modification, preserving all metadata. Creating a photo album to share is as simple as putting all the jpegs into a folder and choosing "share" in their UI. You can create share links with the usu…
Minor nitpick: Dropbox doesn’t preserve the original filename (e.g. IMG_1234.JPG), instead changing it to a timestamp-based filename. It also doesn’t preserve Live Photos on iOS.
You're correct, turns out Dropbox does rename the files and I'd forgotten.
It seems you're right about some quirks in their automatic photo saving system on iOS. Ive been using them with Android exclusively and had good support for auto saving pictures of all kinds.
OP, if you're on iOS Dropbox may not be for you.
Re: Google Photos will end its free unlimited storage in June 2021
#329> Google Photos will start charging for storage once more than 15 gigs on the account have been used.
15 gigs of photos is nothing.
> Google is also introducing a new policy of deleting data from inactive accounts that haven’t been logged in to for at least two years.
Gak. Randomly deleting your photos. No way I'm relying on cloud storage.
I'm a very long term investor. I received a letter a few months ago from a mutual fund, saying they hadn't heard from me in a few years and were going to hand my account over to the government if they didn't hear from me soon.
Two years is nothing when you're my age. I have piles on the floor in my office that need attending to that have been there 5-10 years.
Re: Google Photos will end its free unlimited storage in June 2021
#330Any open source software for displaying and organizing photos as albums? I already take care of the uploading (I have a big nextcloud server with multiple copies), however there is no affordance provided for collecting albums and sharing them. And just to clarify, an album to me it's just a list of paths to photos and the ability to generate password protected links that I can share with family members. Oh, right, th…
I use NextCloud to share albums, too. You can share a whole folder publicly