I'm in a Google Photos Pickle!

[Invincible Sugar]

Hi! Google Photos will no longer be offering free unlimited photo storage at high quality June of 2021. I depend heavily on Google Photos, I have over 600k photos and videos stored right now, at approximately 9.85 TB. All for free.

 

I don't take issue with paying for storage but at $300/mo for the 10 TB plan, that is not happening. They aren't forcing users to download or pay for existing uploads, anything uploaded before June 2021 will remain free to store, but long term I do not want to split my photo storage so I'll need a new solution.

 

I could download my entire collection, but it won't be organized. There's no way I'm going to have time to organize 600k photos and videos. And I really like how Google Photos lets me search my photos by place, person, object, etc. Super handy.

 

I see two options. Maybe someone here has better advise.

 

1) I could keep using Google Photos, but after June 2021 use my OG Pixel as my only camera, except for special occasions. That would probably be fine, it needs a new battery but otherwise works just fine and has a great camera, even now in 2020. I could use my DSLR sparingly for important things and keep just those photos organized by place taken in the folder names, like I already do.

 

2) I could download everything and use some software to organize it all. I'd probably need about 40 TB in hard drives including room for the future and backups/redundancy. I don't know of any software, but there probably is some paid software that offers similar face sorting and other basic AI, maybe someone here could recommend something?

 

Thanks again, I hope someone here has some good advice.

[bellabichon]

It seems like you've accidentally stumbled right into Google's trap here. The whole point of offering free storage for a limited time is so when the trial period ends, you're so used to their platform that your begrudgingly shell out some money. I think option #2 is the best bet here. Large hard drives are cheaper than ever, and once you take your photos offline, you'll have complete control over them. Organizing might be a pain, but there are plenty of software options. I'm pretty sure Lightroom CC even has a pretty neat built-in organizer.

[jaslion]

Honestly I'm in the same boat as you are I just have less on there and have about 2tb of high quality on a backup server nas with sync to backblaze unlimited as a backup (part from the local one).

 

Also keep in mind that the og pixel will probably vanish soon from the supported list as has happened to me with my lg g5 where I specifically had 100gb storage for free with no end date and then suddenly got a message that my device was being removed from the support list about 4 years later.

 

Google basically made any competition irrelevant by hosting this all for free and they did this with basically just that intention so yeah it's gonna be a hope that something comes along or use the old photo organizers from the past.

[Bombastinator]

The traditional move is an option #3: move everything to a different service still trying to drum up a customer base and offering free stuff. That will eventually end though and you’ll be stuck with #2.  All #3 does is delay the inevitable.  Does buy a bit of time though.

[Senzelian]

I'd say make the jump to a different solution. Best thing is to host the pictures yourself.

Your post actually made me check out Plex for uploading my pictures instead of Google Fotos, because I already use it for my music.

But to be honest I don't take many pictures anyway, so that the onboard storage of my phone is enough for my personal use.

[ev1lchris]

I would have thought it would be free forever because we're basically creating a database of people and locations that they could use, maybe even for nefarious purposes.

 

I guess you could get a 100 TB hard drive and run software to make it an SFTP server or something.

[Raginryuu]

20 hours ago, jaslion said:

Honestly I'm in the same boat as you are I just have less on there and have about 2tb of high quality on a backup server nas with sync to backblaze unlimited as a backup (part from the local one).

I'm here for the same issue, and remember this older video of NAS sever. I was thinking a NAS server with https://takeout.google.com/?hl=en would a be an idea... However, I'm feeling iffy whether this would be the same or similar service like Google photos that i l had loved. Posting and following here to see if others have better ideas or comments
 

 

[Bombastinator]

Pointless observation:

Every time I read that headline my brain has to sort of manually differentiate “ I’m in a google photos pickle” from “I’m inside a pickle in this google photo”

[ev1lchris]

You can make a NAS from a Raspberry Pi.  You can even use the older Pi 3.

[Gokuofuin]

I cant believe this, I mean the whole point of using GP is that I dont need to worry about space. Now Ill have to basically go back to not backing up the photos automatically and do it manually like I used to. Google sucks....

[Invincible Sugar]

On 11/13/2020 at 2:40 AM, Gokuofuin said:

I cant believe this, I mean the whole point of using GP is that I dont need to worry about space. Now Ill have to basically go back to not backing up the photos automatically and do it manually like I used to. Google sucks....

As others have suggested it's the perfect way to force people into paying.

[Invincible Sugar]

On 11/13/2020 at 12:51 AM, ev1lchris said:

You can make a NAS from a Raspberry Pi.  You can even use the older Pi 3.

I could but that won't search through photos by face, object, location, etc.