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Comment by noncoml | Hacker News Reader

> Google Photos gives you free, unlimited online storage for all your original quality photos and 4K videos.

So what will happen to your photos when Google decides to "sunset" Google Photos?

Also, what happens to your phone/contacts/purchases when Google (AI?) decides you have violated YouTube T&C and locks your account?

Edit: Finally, are your phone data used for improving the targeted ads?

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> So what will happen to your photos when Google decides to "sunset" Google Photos?

I'm pretty sure you can export your photos from Gooogle Photos via Google Takeout:

https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/3024190?hl=en

If Google sunsets Google Photos, they absolutely will provide a way to export them first.

Obvious suggestion, but: this is why I have my phone automatically copy new pictures to Google Pictures, OneDrive, and Dropbox as soon as my phone gets on a good wifi connection.

May I ask which software/app you use that can do this?

I think all of those apps have an auto upload feature for your photos

Maybe I'm naïve but I really cannot imagine Google shutting down Photos with no notice. So if they say they are closing it, I'll just downloaded them en masse and upload elsewhere.

They may have changed it, but if I remember correctly that guarantee in the original quality only lasts for 2 years. So after uploading photos for 2 years, everything is converted to lower quality. They'll also implicitly use your photos for facial recognition and I don't believe there's a way to disable this "feature."

The Pixels get 3 years of free full quality photo uploads and after the 3 years, any new photos uploaded from the phone are compressed. Existing photos do not get downgraded.

See the fine print at the bottom of these pages:

https://store.google.com/product/pixel_2

https://store.google.com/product/pixel_3

This is true, however, the first-generation Pixel is grandfathered into unlimited original-resolution photos for life.

Anecdotally, I was the early user of Picassa that was shut down and all my photos have been automatically migrated to Google Photos, so I would still give Google a benefit of the doubt. But recent stunts from them make it more and more difficult to trust them.

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