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Comment by mrkramer | Hacker News Reader

Facebook is doing the same thing[0] meaning that YouTube is Web's utility at this point. Google is so profitable that they will not put any limit on your YouTube storage anytime soon.

[0] https://techcrunch.com/2025/02/18/facebook-now-only-stores-l...

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I have been dealing with extracting photos from Google photos in a reasonable way. That experience has reminded the only backup is the backup you fully control. Download your content, duplicate it on a second disk, and use a general purpose cloud storage system to sync it.

Does google takeout not work? I’ve been intending to help my partner move off of Google Photos and takeout is what I had planned.

It works well.

You can submit bulk requests but as of a few years ago the full resolution isn't uploaded unless you are on their premium plan, the best option is to pull them from the devices directly.

Google is so good at making money that they won’t let opportunities like removing “non revenue generating content” and “high maintenance content” pass them by. A problem that started with larry page visiting steve jobs in his deathbed.

The days of accumulating data for it to be profitable someday in the future are going away with the introduction of AI. Once the videos have quenched research possibilities, the data will be removed.

And google street view will need a license to use

Google will do the same thing, it's only a question of when (and I will be in trouble when they do!) The first step in this direction was turning off Google Photos free storage at lower resolution.

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