While we're on it, what's the best way to back up all my google photos? I'm on a paid plan, but nonetheless, that has some important memories I'd like redundancy on.
Note that the takeout archive will most likely not contain your original images. Google photos deletes, and in some cases rewrites, the metadata in your files. It's much better to back up your photos and videos directly from your devices. I use Resilio Sync or SyncThing to do this automatically, and then use PhotoStructure to manage and view my photo and video library on my own hardware.
I also appreciate that they gave me a checkbox for "please don't use my family photos to train your algorithms" so I can opt out, Google does not give you the option, all your photos are theirs to train with.