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

[speedgoose]

Tldr: low quality but unlimited storage is expensive, so it will go away in June. However everything uploaded before will not use space for some time. High quality storage has never been unlimited so no changes.

A Google Photos storage policy update I would love to read is some guarantee that I can download a backup of my photos if my Google account gets blocked for some reasons.

[londons_explore → speedgoose]

> low quality but unlimited storage is expensive

I guarantee Google still makes money from those users. Google Photos adds value to the Google ecosystem, attracting more users and more paying users. The more history you have stored with Google, the harder it is to move. It also promotes other Google services users do pay for.

I'd guess this is a move by someone in middle management to increase revenues for their product, without seeing the bigger picture, where this move probably has negative shareholder value.

[ggm → speedgoose]

> A Google Photos storage policy update I would love to read is some guarantee that I can download a backup of my photos if my Google account gets blocked for some reasons.

This doesn't exist. But you can schedule a year of e.g. 2 monthly incremental takeouts at takeout.google.com and stop-limit your dataloss scenario to a window.

btw: I think it should exist. I think google should clarify its 'we terminated you' process to include the takeout function for export of the data they currently hold hostage.

[Fogest → ggm]

This is exactly what I do. Every 2 months I get an email about a new backup being ready. If I know I have done a lot of stuff on my google account in the last 2 months I'll download a fresh archive of it and dump it to my NAS. It's kinda a tedious process since I have to go through and download all the zip files they have.

[speedgoose → ggm]

I don't want to have to backup the data myself. I pay Google so they can backup my photos.

[ggm → speedgoose]

If you pay Google you won't be affected by this change since its about non paying people.

[ianhowson → speedgoose]

Keep in mind that the photos you download from Takeout have the GPS data stripped out, so (sibling commentors) already have an incomplete backup.

PhotoSync (https://www.photosync-app.com/home.html) lets you do a good-old-fashioned dump to a NAS.

[Octopuz → ianhowson]

Does PhotoSync keep the GPS/location data when downloading from Google Photos? Their website is not very specific and slightly outdated (Picasa login anyone?)

[ianhowson → Octopuz]

Sorry, I wasn't clear. PhotoSync copies the photos from your device to some destination (NAS, SMB, S3, whatever.) It doesn't interact with Google Photos. When it copies stuff it copies the original HEIC/JPEG/RAW/whatever, so the GPS EXIF is preserved.

[seized → speedgoose]

Google Takeout. Or RClone can be used to download with some limitations (bursts dont download, GPS EXIf data is stripped, videos are true original nitrate).

I use Syncthing to copy from my phone to my NAS to backup the true original files.

[speedgoose → seized]

Yes but then I need to host the backup in a reliable way. I think Google is very competent to keep my personal data.

[ISL → speedgoose]

The way to guarantee the latter is to make your own periodic backups.

[speedgoose → ISL]

But then these is almost no point to use Google Photos.

[ISL → speedgoose]

The instant sync from my phone is pretty rad and my primary use-case.

For real backups, I manually sync the phone's images/movies/dngs to my home photo archive.