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Google Photos will end its free unlimited storage in June 2021

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Re: Google Photos will end its free unlimited storage in June 2021

#532
post #307

I pay for Google Photos and you should too if you care about your photos. I've used Dropbox, Apple Photos and Google Photos. Google Photos is hands down the best photo application for individuals. Mostly because its face/object/place/whatever recognition is the best of its kind. Dropbox: they are ignoring the photos needs from users. They focus on "enterprise cloud storage" and "workplace sharing". Apple: I love the…

I'm trying to use Google Photos but find it hard to manage albums. Like I have a few thousand photos, I want to find all the ones that I didn't assign to albums yet. Doesn't seem like there's a way to do so.

I also want to press one shortcut key to put a photo into a certain album and at the same time archive it. As it is, it takes several buttons and a mouse selection and a mouse click (with some delay in between), which is super painful when you have to repeat it thousands of times.

Edit: Hmm, I saw there's Google Photos API. If it's easy(ish) to use, could I possibly write some small python or JS scripts to get this functionality? Or is there a reason this isn't as simple as it sounds?

Re: Google Photos will end its free unlimited storage in June 2021

#533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Expecting them to not only exempt you from paying for your previously uploaded photos, but to also allow you to continue to upload photos for free indefinitely seems unreasonable to me. That's not what I'd expect from being grandfathered in.

Re: Google Photos will end its free unlimited storage in June 2021

#534
post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never understand people on HN complaining about Ads on YouTube, life long Storage on Google Photos costing $. Probably for 90% of people on HN, it costs more (Opportunity cost) to type a comment complaining about ads on Youtube compared to a month subscription. But for some reason people like to complain.

There are people who complaining Ads but also avoids YouTube Premium. I don't know what they want. Pay option to remove ads is great, isn't it?

It's not about accepting or not accepting paying to view videos. It's about how Youtube decimated competition and now the user cannot choose another pricing option and is left with the only option of paying the amount Google wants you to pay.

Re: Google Photos will end its free unlimited storage in June 2021

#536

Earlier 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?!

It's not entitlement to say that, if it would end like this, they never should have been giving away such vast amounts of free beer in the first place.

That's asking for less free stuff in the interest of preserving healthy competition in the long term.

Re: Google Photos will end its free unlimited storage in June 2021

#537
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free, however, meant that photos could stay online potentially past the end of someone's life. Now the dead will have their memories & photos that they've shared vanish. This is a dark day.

Any downvoters care to register dissent? At -2 now. I see almost no one discussing this. This is how more than one person I know had planned to preserve some of their mementos for the future. This option is now cut off. Why the downvotes, chums?

There is one simple option to preserve whatever you want. Pay for it, dammit.

Re: Google Photos will end its free unlimited storage in June 2021

#538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

1. Loss leading is not dumping.

2. Plenty of competitors in the storage space are still thriving including Dropbox, Box, Microsoft OneDrive, Backblaze, Amazon Drive, Apple iCloud, etc.

3. There's even more more competition on the photo sharing side of things like Instagram, Flickr, SmugMug, 500px, imgur, imageshack, Facebook, 1x, photoblog, etc.

4. Photos isn't even the largest service nor Google the most influential player in either sector.

Re: Google Photos will end its free unlimited storage in June 2021

#539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really hate that low value, reddit-style political comments like this are becoming more common on HN nowadays.

I don't see how that is low value, partisan, or reddit-style. The argument that this is a kind of dumping is insightful and not partisan. It is political in the same way as everything is political.

>I don't see how that is low value, partisan, or reddit-style.

Not surprising considering you just came to HN last year, probably from reddit, bringing the same toxic discussion style.

>It is political in the same way as everything is political.

Yep. There it is. Flooding HN with politics to push an agenda.

Re: Google Photos will end its free unlimited storage in June 2021

#540
post #18

> If you have a Pixel 1-5, photos uploaded from that device won’t be impacted. Photos and videos uploaded in High quality from that device will continue to be exempt from this change, even after June 1, 2021. All good things come to an end, but at least they still honor the promise they made with the Pixel phones.

Worth noting that promise has an expiration date though: my Pixel 3XL says "Unlimited storage for full resolution photos & videos uploaded from your Pixel before 2/1/2022". You can find this in the Backup & Sync settings page in the Photos app.

For the 4a, I don't see any deadline of the Backup & Sync settings page in the Photos app. I just see: ""Free unlimited storage"
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