https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-04/alphabet-... probably has something to do with decreasing profit margins, or they are projecting a bad recession where firms will expend less on advertising. Also they don't actually need to buy the good will of us with free bytes (we are just clicking on adds & feeding the machine with data). They own the market, so why should they?
Google Photos will end its free unlimited storage in June 2021
521–530 of 649 posts
Re: Google Photos will end its free unlimited storage in June 2021
#522Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 th…
> 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. My timeline is much longer than 20 years. I have family photos going back to the Civil War. Besides, Wordstar and Wordperfect files used to be ubiquitous. Good luck with those today. I switched my mail from Outlook to Thunderbird because the former stores the email in some undocumente…
>My timeline is much longer than 20 years.
What storage format do you use then? Are you concerned about Hard drives format becoming obsolete? Are you using Mac or Windows? What if tomorow Apple or Microsoft decide to stop support for their formats? What would you consider as a reliable Storage format? Do you trust linux formats ext3 ext4? What would be your ideal choice looking from your perspective which I really share. It's really a big question for me how reliably store things for long periods of time.
Re: Google Photos will end its free unlimited storage in June 2021
#523Earlier quoted context omitted.
45 years experience, and your first thought is that they are being stored as a binary blob in a database??
Yes. Binary file formats are common (like Microsoft Outlook, pdf files, etc.), and are very fast to read/write. Text files have to be parsed. I've written lots and lots of dumpers for binary file formats generated by other programs.
Oof, I feel the trauma on this one. I've been bitten by too many binary file formats that I don't care to store aggregate amounts of content in them (unless it's just metadata).
Re: Google Photos will end its free unlimited storage in June 2021
#524Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because it's anti-competitive dumping. The dirty secret of SV is that it's an enormous dumping scheme: burn billions of dollars of money to offer 'free' or goods and services, gain a dominant position in the market by driving the honestly priced competition into the ground, then jack up the prices and fleece the customers. Uber is the poster boy of this strategy, but it's not the only one. The honest approach would b…
> The honest approach would be to either grandfather existing customers at the promised price point ($0)… This is exactly what they're doing. According to the announcement, photos uploaded in "high quality" (the previous free/unmetered tier) before June 1, 2021 will remain exempt from the storage quota. Only new photos uploaded after June 1, 2021 count against the quota. So not only are all the existing photos and vi…
That is not 'exactly' what they're doing. It's loosely what they're doing.
Being grandfathered into a service means you get to keep using it the way you did, full stop.
This service is about uploading and downloading files. All they're preserving is the ability to download them, not upload.
Re: Google Photos will end its free unlimited storage in June 2021
#525Earlier quoted context omitted.
This seems like a fallacy. VC subsidies benefit consumers until they run out of money or raise prices. As long as the market remains free, there will be new entrants. The problem is regulation that keeps competitors out. In some cases Big Co. lobbies for this regulation, but often it is government that kills competition by attempting to tax said Big Co., or adds expensive compliance.
the cost for the user to change from one competitor to the next aren't 0
Especially when the service is of the social networking sort. Your friends don't move just because you do, or they might not move to the same place.
Re: Google Photos will end its free unlimited storage in June 2021
#526Surprised to see the level of anger here about this. This is not the usual "Google kills product", it's the type of thing that HN loves to say they would be happy to pay for ("Just give me something that does A B C and doesn't show me ads and I would be happy to pay for it!!!", well I guess until you are actually asked to pay for it). Also, as a general rule, people should welcome big cos moving away from the "free s…
Because it's anti-competitive dumping. The dirty secret of SV is that it's an enormous dumping scheme: burn billions of dollars of money to offer 'free' or goods and services, gain a dominant position in the market by driving the honestly priced competition into the ground, then jack up the prices and fleece the customers. Uber is the poster boy of this strategy, but it's not the only one. The honest approach would b…
Google's "business" model has been in question for years now, I now am extra glad that I already downloaded all my data from Google, acquired my own domain and set up a nextcloud server. If I need more space, I buy another/larger hard drive, and never need to worry about data collection, services shutting down or prices changing.
Re: Google Photos will end its free unlimited storage in June 2021
#527Surprised to see the level of anger here about this. This is not the usual "Google kills product", it's the type of thing that HN loves to say they would be happy to pay for ("Just give me something that does A B C and doesn't show me ads and I would be happy to pay for it!!!", well I guess until you are actually asked to pay for it). Also, as a general rule, people should welcome big cos moving away from the "free s…
I'm actually glad to see this. Unlimited storage is unsustainable. I don't like seeing things tied to advertising revenue. It's not comfortable from a privacy perspective, and it's certainly not competitive for other players wanting to enter the space without the dollars from Google's huge advertising funnel/marketplace/ecosystem. You'll notice Google also started to clamp down on Gmail trash storage space, and I'll…
Now if only I can pay to not see ads in my personal GMail...
Re: Google Photos will end its free unlimited storage in June 2021
#528Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's so annoying that Google strips the geolocation data. What would be the reason for this? It has been frustrating following along with the ticket that goes nowhere for years: https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/80379228
As andybak says, almost certainly privacy. It's very easy for an unsophisticated user to share photos that, for example, effectively show where they live (or where someone else lives). I believe Facebook strips geo data as well. (A service like Flickr does not although I assume there is a switch somewhere that tells it to.)
Doesn't it also save some space?
I mean, it's a small amount, but on the scale of google it might be worth it.
Re: Google Photos will end its free unlimited storage in June 2021
#529Surprised to see the level of anger here about this. This is not the usual "Google kills product", it's the type of thing that HN loves to say they would be happy to pay for ("Just give me something that does A B C and doesn't show me ads and I would be happy to pay for it!!!", well I guess until you are actually asked to pay for it). Also, as a general rule, people should welcome big cos moving away from the "free s…
Like news
Re: Google Photos will end its free unlimited storage in June 2021
#530Earlier quoted context omitted.
We are going to lawyer this, aren't we? The service was promised for free, not per photo storage. The expectation is that the service will continue to be free. From what you're saying, (most of) the future use of the service, which consists of uploading and storing new photos, will be charged. Velvet gloves dumping.
So if someone gives you a free beer for a the foreseeable future they also owe you free beer for life? What kind of entitlement is this?!
If someone gives people free beer while driving out competitors or preventing potential competitors form starting a business, then it's dumping. No company should be entitled to decimate competition using dirty strategies.