Google Photos will end its free unlimited storage on June 1st, 2021

scojer

scojer

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https://www.theverge.com/2020/11/11/21560810/google-photos-unlimited-cap-free-uploads-15gb-ending

After five years of offering unlimited free photo backups at “high quality,” Google Photos will start charging for storage once more than 15 gigs on the account have been used. The change will happen on June 1st, 2021, and it comes with other Google Drive policy changes like counting Google Workspace documents and spreadsheets against the same cap. Google is also introducing a new policy of deleting data from inactive accounts that haven’t been logged in to for at least two years.
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Today, more than 4 trillion photos are stored in Google Photos, and every week 28 billion new photos and videos are uploaded. Since so many of you rely on Google Photos to store your memories, it’s important that it’s not just a great product, but also continues to meet your needs over the long haul. In order to welcome even more of your memories and build Google Photos for the future, we are changing our unlimited High quality storage policy.
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This is a big change for anyone that uses Google photos as an easy backup solution.

Yikes!
 
I wonder how a user can find out if Google scanned their images? And whether or not Google used the scans of those images for their purposes? And whether all such data, including anything derived from using that data, will be deleted when the user deletes their photos?

Because I'm sure Google puts user data rights at the forefront.
 
I think that's fair enough. I still have 4GB left but the subscription starts at only $2/mo, so that is reasonable.
 
I got the Google Photos unlimited with my Pixel when it was new. The first thing I did when I took it out of the box was to disable that shit (and everything esle cloud enabled). I don't need Google having all of my pictures.

Through Google Fi I also have something called Google One for free, but that has been permanently disabled as well. I honeslty have no idea what it does. I just know that it is cloud, and thus it is disabled.

if I need to back up my pictures, I'll drag and drop them off my phone to my NAS like a real person.
 
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variant said:
I guess they completed their facial recognition AI.
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This is what I was thinking. They are finished scanning and analyzing our pictures for free, and now that people are hooked, they will limit the space and force us to pay for more space beyond the 15GB.
 
I don't use this service, but there is something about this change that pisses me off.

When you sell a device and claim tjat something is included, it should be included for the life of the device, not just discontinued one day...
 
/dev/null said:
Don't depend on the cloud or "free services". Run your own, pay a premium or don't expect anything. Welcome to life.
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Yeah, but if a service is included with the purchase price of hardware and you buy that hardware, they should be obligated to provide that service free of charge until you stop using the hardware.

That's just common sense.

I know they add weasel words to the contract to let them get their way out of it, but that is just fundamentally dishonest.

If you advertise "included" it had better be "included".

Other than that I'm with you. I don't want to use that cloud BS either.
 
I use Google photos, but only to backup nature photos and my pets. I don't mind those being uploaded.
If I take a picture with faces in it, those do NOT go to google photos, those, if I want to back them up, go to a hard drive.

That's just how I use it. I'm not going to shun a cloud service just because I'm scared of a company having my data, I'm going to control what data I give them.
 
They killed the important part of free google photo upload years ago when they put a cap on unlimited hosting with an image size smaller than the default pixel camera.

I also have google one* already so this doesn't really affect me, but it is a bad move.

*Came with some sort of bundle with the rest of the google services I have, not sure if it was Fi, Nest, YouTube premium or what at this point.
 
scojer said:
https://www.theverge.com/2020/11/11/21560810/google-photos-unlimited-cap-free-uploads-15gb-ending





This is a big change for anyone that uses Google photos as an easy backup solution.

Yikes!
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https://nextcloud.com/

Nextcloud.png
 
Just got this email.

Apparently doesn't apply to Pixel phones. Guess I'm good for now. I'm likely sticking to my Pixel 2 for another year.
Screenshot_20201112-132243.png
 
Yes high quality is free for Pixel owners but you have limited full quality. In any case, it's a useful service, I don't mind paying if it makes my life easier.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
I don't use this service, but there is something about this change that pisses me off.
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Did you see HP's free ink for life (15 pages per month); that one didn't make it to a year before they decided to make it $1/month.

UltraTaco said:
Lexus has limited trial of remote start. After X amount of years, function seizes to exist unless monthly fee is paid🤭😊

Taco believe tesla nd bmw nd.........many others have similar. Surely google wouldn't want to be lagging behind..
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Chrysler does this too (for remote start via website/phone apl). Not worth anywhere near what they want for it.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
I got the Google Photos unlimited with my Pixel when it was new. The first thing I did when I took it out of the box was to disable that shit (and everything esle cloud enabled). I don't need Google having all of my pictures.

Through Google Fi I also have something called Google One for free, but that has been permanently disabled as well. I honeslty have no idea what it does. I just know that it is cloud, and thus it is disabled.

if I need to back up my pictures, I'll drag and drop them off my phone to my NAS like a real person.
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You consider a NAS to be a backup? Lol.
 
jmilcher said:
You consider a NAS to be a backup? Lol.
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It's a tiered backup solution.

My ZFS based NAS is a duplicated backup of what is on my phone. Even if it ended right there, it would still be a backup, because the content on my phone exists in duplicate in another location.

All of my computers are set up to either use a shared folder on the NAS directly to store files, or to periodically run a backup to it.

Files on the NAS are stored in a 12 drive 2x Raidz2 configuration, equivalent of hardware RAID60.

My NAS, snapshots nightly at 3am on the block level and uses ZFS Send/Recv to sync that snapshot nightly to my off-site backup server. It stores data on a 16 drive Raidz3 solution (three redundant drives) No equivalent hardware raid exists to my knowledge.

Daily snapshots are kept for a week. Weekly snapshots are kept for a month. Monthly snapshots are kept for 12 months and annual snapshots never expire.

I have this all set up with custom shell scripts running off of cron, that handle the snapshots, the backups and the expirations automatically.

What is your home backup solution?
 
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/dev/null said:
I do FreeNAS+Backblaze. Works great.
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When did backblaze add support for freeNAS? Or are you using b2?

toast0 said:
Did you see HP's free ink for life (15 pages per month); that one didn't make it to a year before they decided to make it $1/month.


Chrysler does this too (for remote start via website/phone apl). Not worth anywhere near what they want for it.
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HP is evil. And I am pretty sure all car manufactures do this. My chevy came with 5 years free and after that they disable the functionality - but they keep the cell on so they can get their telemetric data. Too bad I disabled it. ;p
 
kju1 said:
When did backblaze add support for freeNAS? Or are you using b2?



HP is evil. And I am pretty sure all car manufactures do this. My chevy came with 5 years free and after that they disable the functionality - but they keep the cell on so they can get their telemetric data. Too bad I disabled it. ;p
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I'm using the B2 support built into freenas. $5/TB/Month works for me for my vm backups just fine with de-duped diffs. I think a month of backups is under $5.
 
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