News: 1605168251

" Google justified the changes by saying its users were consuming tons of digital storage space in its cloud "

Well duh, you gave them the space, don't come complaining that they are using it. If I had availed myself of that cloud platform, I would currently have 61.6GB stored up there (the total of all my family picture data on my Photo disk) and I would be wondering just how much this change would impact me.

As usual, something offered up as free is now being taken advantage of to tie users into paying. A despicable move, even if it had been forewarned.

Honestly, people should stop falling for all that free crap - it's just a bait and switch.

If you just buy a 1TB USB drive, you won't have to surrender you data to Google and won't be at the mercy of bandwidth and connectivity issues.

On the Cloud everyone [except yourself] can see your data

and these, currently, go for approx. 35 quid (ok, double that for this vulgar 5-letter word that with b....). But this solution is for old farts, you know, baby boomers and such relics (did you have electricity when you went to school dad?) who use those... computer thingies and gloat they can "type" on their "keyboards" and send "eeeemails". So uncool, so unlike "swipe press done" or better still "ok google". Googlegooglegoogle.

Couldn't agree more with your points Pascal.

There's too much expectation that everything, everywhere is free, it really is no surprise to me that this will become a paid service.

It's much like the Unlimited data mobile telco's are touting in the UK, until you read the AUP and see what Unlimited Data really means to them, it's a far cry from the view of a consumer.

Ahh well, why you'd need to store your personal photo's etc. in the cloud has always escaped me. Haven't people seen enough celebrity boobs to realise it's relatively easy to access! :)

I remember when dial-up ISPs used to give out free Internet access, and then complain when you used it all the time.

And I think it's very much that the consumer knows the deal exactly - and doesn't care. They got to have huge amounts of storage for nothing, and now if they haven't used it, well who cares about the change? And if they have used it, they'll go elsewhere or say "$1.99 a month? Sure, I used it enough to justify that".

So long as you think of these things as long-term free trials, not lifetime free unlimited storage, then you're fine. And I imagine there are thousands of people who got a Google account as a student, then kept it because it was free, and it saved them having to pay for the basics for all those years and may now be in a position to pay or move elsewhere.

I've had a Google account since they were a tiny, tiny company that nobody had heard of. Same way that I had a Hotmail when it was still HoTMaiL. At one point Hotmail went non-free, and I looked at it and said "Yeah, I use you enough" and paid for it. The fact that later the paid tier became inferior and wouldn't let you collect your email via POP3/IMAP was what made me move away (I assume they've reverted that). I moved to GMail, but I've never given Google a penny for that account that I've been using for all those years as storage, document editing and email. If they said "It's no longer free" tomorrow then I'd probably hop straight on their lowest paid tier. If they raised prices stupidly, then no I wouldn't and I'd seek alternatives.

It's not that people are falling for it. People are taking advantage of it while it's free.

When I moved out a few years ago and had to live on my own for the first time, I was totally strapped for cash (you know it's bad when you have to knock up a spreadsheet with checkboxes and see what you can afford to keep paying and what you can't). Pretty much, there's nothing IT on that spreadsheet beyond an Internet connection and a phone, because everything else was unnecessary.

And that first year was TIGHT... so I signed up for a bunch of trials, free accounts, etc. I got free TV for a year (TVPlayer). I got free Netflix for six months. I got free promotions for everything from laundry detergent to combs. I started free trials of computer games and then cancelled them before the end of the trial period and play through the entire game in that time. I did everything I could to "abuse" free offers, coupons, discounts, trials and freebies. The time spent doing so was well worth it and my entire "entertainment" budget pre-moving disappeared off my spreadsheet for over a year.

Now that I'm settled and don't have huge moving expenses etc. to pay off still, I've paid for the things I wanted to keep, and let the rest fall by the wayside. I replaced TVPlayer with a Raspberry Pi and a DVB-T hat with tvHeadend. Does a better job, but cost me £50 or so and a few hours to set up. I turned off Netflix entirely, I didn't use it much.

People aren't stupid. They know free services aren't free forever. But while they are, you can use them - and whether you're skint, or just very careful with money, or even find it enjoyable to do whatever you can to save money, they can be a great boon. The companies aren't stupid, they know most people won't pay, and they know they can't offer a free service forever. But if the free service operates only as a "Hey look, our services are great" and then even 1% of users pay for them later, it's probably profitable. It doesn't cost Google that much to store a few million free accounts, and it introduces companies etc. to them because people get the free account at home and then say "I know what we can use".

I'll be honest with you - my email actually is on a hosted domain that goes to a dedicated server that I rent, that filters all my email for 20-year-old business and personal domains and then passes it onto an email account of my choice. That used to be my Hotmail. Nowadays it's my GMail. If they suddenly start charging, that will go elsewhere. I'm paying for the rest of the system, but not the end destination. And if it really came to it I can set up dovecot and a SquirrelMail in about an hour. I just can't be bothered.

Free services have their function. It's just not something to rely on permanently. But I don't think anybody really does.

Google are _extremely_ pleased that you took advantage of their free service....

well i have over 380Gb of photos. Been taking digital photos since 2000, plus i have scanned a lot of slides.

Why would i even consider cloud storage. I have these backed up in multiple locations. NAS & PC etc

So basically Google now want their sheep to pay them in order to harvest their data... I don't know which is worse - Google's evil or people's stupidity.

I'd be surprised by this development, but the only thing stopping me is my complete lack of surprise.

And I don't have much sympathy, either: I've lost count of the number of times I've warned people that their stuff stored in the cloud isn't under their control, only to have them shrug at me and tell me I'm paranoid.

[1]Homer: "Oh, so that's your little plan! get us addicted and then jack up the price! Well... you win."

[1] https://youtu.be/stC2SNax6kI

Can always be taken away. I don't feel so bad about Googles move here as I did when Microsoft sold me 15gb one drive storage as part of the purchase of one of their phones, and then took it back because a guy in Australia wanted to test the limits of the unlimited cloud storage he'd bought from them. Haven't we all lived long enough to regard a free service as provisional?

Paid for things can be taken away too, if they're provided by unaccountable behemoth corporations that don't care about the rights and convenience of their customers. There are numerous accounts of "cloud services" from IoT to storage and backup that have been discontinued at short notice because they ceased to be sufficiently profitable.

If you don't control it, you can't trust it.

15GB is not really very much in when lots of phones can now record 4K video. I've got a 6 minute video recorded at my mothers 70th which is almost 1GB in of itself. And Google have been pushing Google Photos as a way to 'free up space' on your device by uploading everything to Google and then deleting them from your phone.

Its not really clear from what Google have announced are the going to continue offering the option to store at 'High quality' so you can store more in the 15GB or will that option be ending so they can then force you to pay for Google one?

to share your photos with other people or other devices, I don't see the point of such cloud storage. USB sticks with the same capacity are dirt cheap and you aren't beholding to a third party to look after your files. 1Tb drives are now commonplace and cheap giving you a vast amount of storage. If you are worried about data loss, buy two and keep one (encrypted) in the garden shed or car to mitigate the risk if your house burns down.

"...share your photos with other people..."

Ah, you have hit the nail on the head there.

I have, for the time being, an account on Photobucket. I got it because a forum I was a member of did not have a facility to post photos directly, you had to link to them. As I was doing a project on refurbishing a 1853 Enfield Rifle I needed somewhere to put photos of my progress so that I could include them in my reports.

At the time Photobucket had a policy of allowing linking of photos hosted on their site and all was well. I recently started getting e-mails from Photobucket saying that I had to take out a paid subscription if I wanted to continue linking my photos. I contacted them and told them that I had used them as a convenience and did not care if they closed my account. I have made alternative arrangement for the photos on the project to be housed elsewhere so Photobucket can do their worst.

Bait and switch is one thing but when the offering has no value it does not work.

billions (if not trillions) of photos and videos on google servers, think of the ways to monetize it! Face recognition. Mood recognition. Behavioural patterns. Lifestyle patterns. Trends in fashion. Family relationships. Business ideas. Traffic and crime hotspots. Births, marriages, divorces and deaths, all accounted for. A quote, perhaps ;)

No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter. It is possible that the infusoria under the microscope do the same. No one gave a thought to the older worlds of space as sources of human danger, or thought of them only to dismiss the idea of life upon them as impossible or improbable. It is curious to recall some of the mental habits of those departed days. At most terrestrial men fancied there might be other men upon Mars, perhaps inferior to themselves and ready to welcome a missionary enterprise. Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. And early in the twentieth century came the great disillusionment.

Somewhat ironically, google didn't have to invade our lives, we welcomed them with open arms and banners: YES, PLEASE, FUCK US REAL GOOD, WE LIKE IT NOW, NEVER MIND CONSEQUENCES!

...because its on by default?

until they suddenly aren't in two years time. I've had a gmail account since it launched, and can remember when the storage limits were so small that I had to periodically delete stuff to free up space. Then they made a big fanfare about announcing how unlimited it suddenly was. And now we arrive back at the point where we have to periodically delete stuff to free up space. Unless we pay the monthly data ransom of course.

The Cloud : Hand over your money or your data gets it!

IANAL, but does that not sail close to tying of one service to another?

It may well be that conditioning the use of a service is associated with the purchase of another item from the same vendor is legal but I wonder. Given the EU's attitude to competition rules it may be that Google find themselves on the naughty step, again.

Given our Beloved Leader, Johnson's attitude to "private enterprise" (see also Covid contracts to friends of friends) I do not expect the UK to take any action over this.