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Comment by hotpotamus | Hacker News Reader

I mean, Google did originally say that they would provide the author with unlimited storage, and then once he was in, they altered the deal. I doubt he would have used the service if it would have meant a monthly charge when he started.

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Another way to look at this: users got years of free unlimited photo storage before google decided to monetize. IDK, storage ain't free, it was nice while it lasted

Another consideration for Google may a decreasing level of value in scanning data from photos or acquiring new training data. Like they have all they need and more after years of collecting photos from everyone and have seen nearly all the permutations. No more value for them means now we pay for the storage.

Google Photos images have never been used for model training. It's also unlabelled UGC so I don't know this conspiracy theory has ever gained any traction.

~ ex-photos engineer

Thanks for weighing in. The app sometimes asks me if it has correctly labelled people in photos, and I can confirm or give another label. I would assume some of this is going back to the server, right?

...and continue to get free storage on anything uploaded before the transition date.

Yep, storage isn't free; I'm one of those people who just keeps their own NAS, so I'm well aware, but what I wonder is - was the plan always to get people in with a free offer and then charge them later, or was there some other bet going on?

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