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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

#71
post #46

Time 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…

And then you're responsible for backing that local content somewhere else... maybe the cloud?

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

#72
post #40

Google is 100% running out of space. Google Photos no longer unlimited - https://www.theverge.com/2020/11/11/21560810/google-photos-u... GSuite no longer unlimited - https://9to5google.com/2020/10/08/google-workspace-drive-sto... Google Drive to delete trash after 30 days. Before, it stored till you perma deleted - https://gsuiteupdates.googleblog.com/2020/09/drive-trash-aut... Google Docs to be counted as storage sp…

> Google is 100% running out of space.

No, Google's decided that, in the language of their critics, they want users to be customers, not “products”.

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

#73
post #46

Time 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…

A demo or screenshots would go a long way here.

The project seems like it could be very interesting, but there's too much effort required to perform an initial evaluation.

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

#74
post #46

Time 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…

After downloading, can you upload to a different cloud photo service? I'd love to have a way to sync them automatically, and having a non-cloud backup would be nice too.

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

#75
> Today, more than 4 trillion photos are stored in Google Photos, and every week 28 billion new photos and videos are uploaded.

I found this snippet pretty amazing to think about, it's a scale I've never operated at or planned for. And probably most of us never will.

I wonder what kind of infrastructure, software, bandwidth, and cost considerations (aside from this blog post) they have to contend with.

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

#76
post #40

Google is 100% running out of space. Google Photos no longer unlimited - https://www.theverge.com/2020/11/11/21560810/google-photos-u... GSuite no longer unlimited - https://9to5google.com/2020/10/08/google-workspace-drive-sto... Google Drive to delete trash after 30 days. Before, it stored till you perma deleted - https://gsuiteupdates.googleblog.com/2020/09/drive-trash-aut... Google Docs to be counted as storage sp…

Google is running out of ways to keep up with revenue expectations, it's becoming quite obvious. Even Chrome has small ads at the bottom from time to time now, the desperation is quite clear.

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

#77

Wow. What a disappointment. I started saving my photos with Google for two reasons: - I’m an iPhone user and didn’t want a single company to have access to all my assets, - it was free and this compensated for the discomfort of using a non-native app. Without the second argument it makes total sense to look at other, more privacy-oriented providers. Since Apple tries to rebrand itself this way, I would expect more fo…

> Without the second argument it makes total sense to look at other, more privacy-oriented providers. Photos data isn't used for ads according to the post. Are you concerned about photo analysis for tagging? You can upload to Google Drive in that case and manage the photos yourself like any other provider.

I think in general Google is perceived not as a privacy-friendly company due to its ubiquitousness. Whether it is true does not matter much.

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

#78
post #71
post #46

Time 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…

And then you're responsible for backing that local content somewhere else... maybe the cloud?

The Google Photos interface itself isn't that big of a product (I think), if you can lose some of the sharing features, I guess it'd be quite an easy app to make that can be run off a v-server or Amazon at considerably less long-term trouble. The big big issue is the seamless auto-upload from phone to Google Photos, that's the fantastic feature that locked me in.

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

#79
post #47

I've found Microsoft Office to be the best deal for online storage. $70/year gets you a bunch of useful apps and 1TB of storage, or $100 year provides 1TB for up to 6 accounts. Nothing else seems to come close.

How do you store photos there? Do they make an Android client that syncs your phone's photos to the cloud?

Yup, on Android photo upload works the same as Dropbox/Google. It doesn't have the AI smarts of Google Photos though. Just tried searching for 'cat' and the results were useless. But the storage works.

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

#80

Sad as I am to see "unlimited" go away, this is probably the best way to do it: * Grandfathering existing photos means I don't have to worry about going back and deleting objects or getting an sudden bump in cost. * 15 GB is pretty generous... iCloud includes 5GB for free. * $2/month isn't a huge jump to the next level of storage.

To be clear the 'high quality' is still unlimited. Only the 'original quality' will be quotaed.
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