Why not just pay $30/yr to get access to all the features which Google Photos (and other Google services) offer? I know $30 is not the same everywhere but if you are in US (and assuming you are in tech given you are on HN), you'd spend that much in a dinner without thinking much. There is something about paying about online services which brings a lot of resistance in us (me included but I think I am getting over it)
Realistically... if you wanted to pay $30/year for a set and forget photo album, is Google the best place to do that?
Given how they often they deprecate things and how hard I've heard it is to restore a disabled account, I feel like some kind of smaller company dedicated to photo storage would be much better anyway
Photos is a billion user product, how many of those have they deprecated? The disabled account thing may be a real concern, but statistically it's more rare than getting into a plane crash, yet we still fly planes. Also, if anything, monetizing the product and allowing it to be self-sustaining financially makes it far less likely to be killed. I'd much rather pay for a product that brings me value, since now I'm a real customer get treated differently from a free user. Also AFAIK Google has never killed a paid service either.
I would be curious to know what the competition looks like, but I don't know of any other service that lets me do "Show me photos of me and my brother at the beach" and actually return relevant results. The face/object clustering is near flawless, and even works with pets.
Umm.... no. The disabled account thing is pretty common. Perhaps it's safer than flying a GA Cessna 172 in a storm, or being an air force test pilot. But probably not even that.
And as for killed services with a billion users, well, free unlimited Google Photos is now a killed service.
As for killed paid services, Google Play Music, Nest Secure, Google Photos Print, Google Audio Ads, and a ton of others.
Not really, it's mostly frequency illusion hanging out on HN, but considering Google has multi-billion users, those dozen or so incidents are nothing in comparison.
> free unlimited Google Photos
That's a feature, not a service. And name me one other company that provides unlimited free storage.
> Google Play Music
Technically migrated, all your data and purchases are still there
> Nest Secure
Hardware is a completely different ball game. The existing users can still keep using their hardware just fine. Every single device eventually stops being sold.
> Google Photos Print
Again, a feature. You didn't lose any data. You can still print photos using other services.
> Google Audio Ads
Not familiar, but I see it's still around? Do you have a link to the announcement of it being killed?
Just for something to think about regarding the disabled/locked accounts, remember that we only hear about those who have the means/social-media following to make a Big Deal about it or those with the right friends inside of Google who might be able to nudge the proper team to take a second look, and the only stories that happen to pop up are "success stories" if I can call them that. As far as I can see, the average person is screwed should The Algorithm (blessed be thy name) decide against them.
Given the scale of Google and how many people have access to the Internet today, I'd generally be willing to bet that there are many, many others with the same fate but who simply can't get enough traction behind them for anyone (let alone Google) to care enough.
> Not really, it's mostly frequency illusion hanging out on HN, but considering Google has multi-billion users, those dozen or so incidents are nothing in comparison.
It's not at all uncommon.
I've done business with Google multiple times in my career, and I could name a dozen such incidents. They're just not public.
For the most part, there wasn't anything the user did; just Google algorithm bugs. In one case, a startup lost all of its data because one Google system expected another Google system to implement a fraud detection measure, and the other Google system didn't. Completely internal to Google, but poof, all of a sudden, account gone, all data gone, and no way to fix it.
In another case, GCE lost a contract worth millions of dollars to AWS because Youtube had algorithm bugs. Poof. Youtube system broke. This was early GCE days, and they were looking for successes, and we were sufficiently high-profile that we had a dedicated engineering team. They pushed on Youtube. Youtube said we weren't important enough to help.
Most of this stuff is either under NDA, or otherwise just private, but it is why my current employer, as a policy, doesn't do business with Google. That's a big contract too; I'm not at a startup right now, but at a big company.
> And name me one other company that provides unlimited free storage
I think you're unintentionally arguing I shouldn't rely on Google-unique features, since I might lose them. I already knew that. I've learned that lesson painfully over, and over, and over, and over, and over.
That hurts Google in B2B. If all customers take that philosophy, Google fundamentally can't have unique, differentiating advantages beyond price. It doesn't matter what unique AI algorithm Googlers come up with for the Google Cloud. I won't use it if I can't count on it still being around when I ship my product. And I can't. The only time I will use Google is if it provides unique customer access (e.g. Android apps or Youtube eyeballs), which hopefully the antitrust thing will help with.
I'm not sure if you're just stating a personal preference there, or hinting that Flickr are somehow morally superior to Google. But Flickr had their own 'google Photos moment' a few years back, when they were bought out by SmugMug and immediately got rid of their 'free for life' 1TB storage.
I am pretty much all-in with Google and do what I can to protect my Google account, but one risk you can't get rid of is if Google cancelled your account for whatever mysterious reason, which is unlikely but would be catastrophic.
I still like Google Photos, but ideally I'd automatically sync all my photos to a backup service and have things set up so I could make it the primary replica if needed.
IMO, no one should be treating any online photo site as their primary photo storage. At the risk of seeming paranoid, I have everything local and both backed up locally and to Backblaze; the online photo site I use is strictly for sharing and, I suppose, yet another backup of last resort.
If you're easily generating 200GB per month in photos and videos then a NAS would probably make more sense. But keep in mind the vast majority of people don't take that many photos.
