Google Photos Launches With Unlimited Storage, Completely Separate From Google+

An anonymous reader writes with a report that Google yesterday announced at its I/O conference a photo-storage site known as Google Photos. Says the article: The new service is completely separate from Google+, something Google users have been requesting for eons. Google is declaring that Google Photos lets you backup and store "unlimited, high-quality photos and videos, for free." It's a bit creepy to see all the photos that Google still has on tap, including many that I've since deleted on my phone.

Comments

oajds

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder how google is going to use our photos... hum... profits

Re:oajds

[kav2k]

Datasets for neural net training.

If you didn't see the article/service, it can now classify photos so you can search by something like "car" or "red".

Re:oajds

[Whiteox]

Read the fine print. They can use the pics anyhow they want.

Re:oajds

[Anonymous Coward]

It's stupid anyhow. These days you can buy a 128GB USB flash drive for like $30, which should hold a lot of pictures at full quality. Certainly more than the 15GB Google Photos gives for full quality images. No need for any privacy invading, data harvesting, NSA serving, image degrading garbage like Google.

Re:oajds

[Anonymous Coward]

It's stupid anyhow. These days you can buy a 128GB USB flash drive for like $30, which should hold a lot of pictures at full quality.

But it can't be (easily) automated. And USB flash drives are EVIL for backups - you should buy a HDD for that. With the auto-upload you have the photos backed up (and also ready to be sent to someone through any channel) in matter of seconds, without the need for any action you can forgot, delay, or whatever. A good backup solution doesn't require any activity from the user. And this is especially important if you want to backup your grandma's data.

Re:oajds

[Anonymous Coward]

Just like Slashdot's parent company Dice seems to do anything they want with Sourceforge projects and then pretends it never happened.

Shit Dice, we have the rest of the fucking Internet. This isn't China. Have you ever heard of the Streisand effect?

Re:oajds

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

What I'd be interested to see is if, and how aggressively, they take action against image collections that are not of any use for their desired purposes.

They obviously can't be too capricious and unpredictable, or they'll spook users; but you can't offer 'unlimited' storage without making some provision for 'that guy who hacks together a FUSE filesystem that uses images uploaded to Google Photos as a storage medium' or the 'Cool, this will make my next time-lapse video project way easier' cases.(and, of course, if you are feeling particularly uncreative, /dev/random just needs a dash of formatting information to be as many bitmaps as you could possibly desire.)

Are they just going to go with the ISP-style 'I said unlimited; but I actually meant X photos or Y GB of traffic per month; apparently I'm allowed to get away with that, so STFU', are they going to have peons manually examine accounts whose size gets out of hand and decide what to do?

Re:oajds

[camg188]

The Fappening II

Re:oajds

[Anonymous Coward]

There are some reports that Google simply rate limits uploads, by introducing increasingly frequent "cool off" periods during which the user can't upload. If that is true, then it depends on the implementation whether there is a hidden limit that you approach Xeno-like or can actually upload unlimited amounts of data, but take a very long time to do it.

I assume that most people who try to upload all of /dev/urandom or something equally useless do so with an account that does not have their real name attached to it, so Google could just decide to scrap that and these people would have no recourse.

Re:oajds

[Anonymous Coward]

This whole SourceForce/GIMP debate makes no sense, and is really a non-issue. Let me explain why.

GIMP is open source software. It's released under the terms of the GPL.

The preamble of the GPL states, with emphasis added,

The licenses for most software and other practical works are designed
to take away your freedom to share and change the works. By contrast,
the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to
share and change all versions of a program--to make sure it remains free
software for all its users.

The whole point of releasing software under the GPL is so that it can be freely modified and shared by anyone, and not just its creators.

So to me, that means that SourceForge, or anyone else for that matter, should be able to take any software released under the GPL, including GIMP, and (optionally) modify it and redistribute it as per the terms of the GPL.

The original creator of the software doesn't need to like or approve of these changes. Somebody could update GIMP to show pictures of penises every 10 seconds, and to loudly play an audio clip of somebody screaming "Buttfuck!" every 20 seconds. As long as this updated version is released in a way that's compatible with the GPL, I don't think that the original authors of the code should have any reason to complain. They chose the GPL, which gives people the freedom to make changes to the code, and to redistribute those changes.

I think that the authors of the software have even less reason to complain when an installer is involved. The installer is completely separate from the software it is installing. The installed software is compiled, and could very well be completely unmodified. The installed software is very likely compressed within the installer, so it's not like the binary itself is even directly embedded within the installer. All the installer contains is an array of data that, as-is, is useless. So the authors of the installed software should really have no say over what the installer does. If it chooses to show ads before or after installing the software, so be it. If it chooses to install other software before or after installing the main software, so be it.

I know that you'll probably accuse me of being a "shill" or otherwise affiliated with Dice or SourceForce, but I'm obviously not. All I'm doing is, as an independent observer, rationally and objectively looking at the facts of the case. The GIMP developers chose a license that's specifically designed to allow their software to be modified and freely shared. It doesn't require them to approve of or even like the modifications that were made, or how it was redistributed. So they shouldn't act like children when somebody freely distributes the software in a way that they don't like, especially if the software itself hasn't even been modified.

Re:oajds

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course the GPL allows it, but not everything that is legal is moral. Dice are being dicks.

Re:oajds

[Anonymous Coward]

A good backup solution doesn't require any activity from the user. And this is especially important if you want to backup your grandma's data.

Time Machine on the Mac. Which won't help if your house burns down, but recent versions of Mac OS allow for multiple TM drives that can be automatically rotated through.

For a cloud-y alternative, I recommend Crash Plan, which encrypts before sending it out over the proverbial wire.

Re:oajds

[jafiwam]

What I'd be interested to see is if, and how aggressively, they take action against image collections that are not of any use for their desired purposes. They obviously can't be too capricious and unpredictable, or they'll spook users; but you can't offer 'unlimited' storage without making some provision for 'that guy who hacks together a FUSE filesystem that uses images uploaded to Google Photos as a storage medium' or the 'Cool, this will make my next time-lapse video project way easier' cases.(and, of course, if you are feeling particularly uncreative, /dev/random just needs a dash of formatting information to be as many bitmaps as you could possibly desire.) Are they just going to go with the ISP-style 'I said unlimited; but I actually meant X photos or Y GB of traffic per month; apparently I'm allowed to get away with that, so STFU', are they going to have peons manually examine accounts whose size gets out of hand and decide what to do?

Their track record on removing useful and loved services for little or no reason should spook users well enough without playing games with the content.

Re:oajds

[robsku]

You know, we don't have to like, or even accept something someone or something does just because it's legal. There is such things for example as "bad behavior".

Re: oajds

[mattwarden]

There is no free lunch

Re:oajds

[Anonymous Coward]

Finally, an easy way to tag my porn collection!

Wait... does that neural net knows what "Furry" and "Futanari" mean?

Re:oajds

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, most people who have access to "unlimited" Google Drive quickly seem to discover that it is so slow as to be very limited. Nobody I spoke to has been happy with an attempt to migrate to Google Drive, but instead had to abandon ship and go back to S3 or Dropbox.

Being charitable, Google may be optimized for scale-out of lots of mobile-phone class devices, which have severe bottlenecks of their own as far as uploads. Whether Google intended this or not, it makes Drive useless for workstation or server class storage applications where a single large file upload needs to be moving at wire speeds e.g. 50-500 MB/s and not at 1 MB/s or less experienced by early adopters.

Re:oajds

[theronb]

No Linux desktop client.

Re:oajds

[Anonymous Coward]

Somwhat related to your point.
[Event "AI Factory's Chess"]
[Site "Android Device"]
[Date "2015.05.30"]
[Round "1"]
[White "You"]
[Black "Cpu (8)"]
[PlyCount "151"]
[Result "1-0"]

1. e2e4 e7e5 2. Ng1f3 Nb8c6 3. Bf1b5 a7a6 4. Bb5xc6 d7xc6 5. d2d3 Bc8g4
6. h2h3 Bg4xf3 7. Qd1xf3 Bf8c5 8. O-O Qd8e7 9. Bc1e3 Ng8f6 10. Nb1d2 h7h6
11. Qf3e2 Bc5xe3 12. Qe2xe3 c6c5 13. f2f4 Nf6d7 14. Qe3g3 Qe7f6 15. f4f5 Rh8g8
16. Ra1c1 Rg8h8 17. Nd2b3 a6a5 18. Qg3e3 b7b6 19. c2c3 a5a4 20. Nb3d2 O-O-O
21. b2b3 a4xb3 22. a2xb3 Rh8h7 23. Rc1a1 Qf6d6 24. Nd2c4 Qd6f6 25. Qe3c1 Rh7h8
26. Qc1a3 Qf6c6 27. Rf1b1 b6b5 28. Nc4e3 b5b4 29. c3xb4 c5xb4 30. Qa3xb4 Qc6b6
31. Qb4xb6 Nd7xb6 32. Rb1d1 Kc8b7 33. Ra1a5 f7f6 34. Ne3d5 Nb6xd5 35. e4xd5 Kb7c8
36. Rd1c1 Kc8d7 37. Ra5a7 Rd8c8 38. b3b4 Rh8e8 39. Rc1e1 Rc8a8 40. Ra7a5 Ra8b8
41. Re1e4 h6h5 42. Kg1f2 Rb8a8 43. Kf2g3 Re8c8 44. Kg3h4 Ra8xa5 45. b4xa5 Rc8a8
46. Re4a4 Ra8a6 47. Kh4xh5 c7c6 48. Kh5g6 c6xd5 49. Kg6xg7 Kd7c6 50. h3h4 Kc6b5
51. Ra4g4 Kb5xa5 52. h4h5 Ka5b5 53. h5h6 Ra6a7+ 54. Kg7xf6 Ra7a6+ 55. Kf6g7 Ra6a7+
56. Kg7g6 Ra7a6+ 57. f5f6 Kb5c6 58. h6h7 Ra6a8 59. Kg6g7 Kc6d6 60. h7h8=Q Ra8xh8
61. Kg7xh8 Kd6e6 62. Kh8g7 e5e4 63. d3xe4 d5xe4 64. Rg4xe4+ Ke6f5 65. Re4a4 Kf5g5
66. f6f7 Kg5f5 67. f7f8=Q+ Kf5e5 68. Qf8f6+ Ke5d5 69. Qf6f5+ Kd5c6 70. Ra4a6+ Kc6b7
71. Qf5e6 Kb7b8 72. Qe6b6+ Kb8c8 73. Ra6a8+ Kc8d7 74. Ra8a7+ Kd7c8 75. Qb6c6+ Kc8b8
76. Qc6b7# 1-0

Re:oajds

[Anonymous Coward]

I call bullshit. Show us the fine print that says this.

Hosting companys often include some provision so you can't sue them for copyright violation when they display images to people in ACLs that you set because the service in normal operation "copies" things. Tumblr and instragram include extra rules that resharing within the site is allowed. I don't trust my ability to interpret legal language, but here's an article that sounds more trustworthy:

http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2013/01/who-really-owns-your-photos-in-social-media-updated-2013-edition025/

If Google's policy is not one that's clear and constrained to normal cloud hosting stuff, let's see the part you think is unclear or overbroad.

Re:oajds

[Anonymous Coward]

USB flash drives are a lot more reliable than hard drives. A hard drive has moving parts that can fail and magnetic media that can be corrupted or wiped easily. A flash drive won't ever suffer degradation like that and *if* you ever run out of write cycles, the data can still be read.

Re:oajds

[Anonymous Coward]

128GB is a tiny amount for photo and video storage. Plus you need to back up the memory stick and you still get no automatic sorting or searching without a 3rd party app that can handle organizing photos on multiple removable devices.

Re:oajds

[Anonymous Coward]

But it can't be (easily) automated.

Easily automated with FreeFileSync.

And USB flash drives are EVIL for backups - you should buy a HDD for that.

Flash drives are better than hard drives for backup. They are more durable and can't be accidentally damaged like a fragile hard drive.

With the auto-upload you have the photos backed up (and also ready to be sent to someone through any channel) in matter of seconds, without the need for any action you can forgot, delay, or whatever

FreeFileSync requires no action, it can be all automated and you can pop the flash drive into ANY PC and instantly email whatever you want to anyone.

A good backup solution doesn't require any activity from the user. And this is especially important if you want to backup your grandma's data.

Again, FreeFileSync requires no action from the user and you can be sure that Google hasn't reduced the the quality of the pictures or harvested your information for advertisers and the NSA.

The only way to safely store things in the cloud is either to have your own server or to encrypt everything, which Google won't allow. Get back to me when you understand something about technology and computers.

Re:oajds

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet it's still much more than the paltry 15GB Google Photos offers. 128GB is actually a huge amount of space for photos. I'm not sure where videos came into this, since Google Photos doesn't even support them. Got any other goalposts to erect?

I guess you're not familiar with cataloguing software either. You little kids these days really don't know shit about computers.

Re: oajds

[Namarrgon]

Google's offering unlimited storage of 16MP images and smaller. For most consumers that's all they need, though professionals will still want to back up their larger & raw files themselves of course. 1080p video is now unlimited too.

The categorization that Google is doing uses image recognition that goes a fair ways beyond any photo management software you can run yourself, but again likely won't be flexible enough for pro users.

The "unlimited" part isn't actually new, BTW. Google have been storing unlimited photos and video for a while now, but the size limits were 2MP and 15 minute clips, previously. This is much more useful for the average person.

Re: oajds

[Anonymous Coward]

No, Google offers "unlimited" storage for images that they recompress into lossy formats. That is utterly worthless for anyone who values their pictures or wants a true backup.

Image recognition is a stupid way to sort images. GPS and tagging is much more accurate and easier to find than some nebulous "automagic" sort order that can change from minute to minute.

Re:oajds

[Whiteox]

“By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services.”
http://agbeat.com/social-media...

Re: oajds

[Anonymous Coward]

This happens all the time, even on accounts with limited storage (based on, say, traffic). It is absolutely, unequivocally *not* unlimited. Ever.

Re:oajds

[Jason Levine]

“By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services.”

This sounds pretty standard. To go through it word by word:

"a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license"

perpetual: So you can't say "Oops, the license expired. Now you own me $750,000 for hosting my photos."
irrevocable: So you can't suddenly decide that Google isn't ALLOWED to have the photos you submitted to them.
worldwide: So Google can't be sued by a user in Country A if their photo is stored on a server in Country B.
royalty-free: Google is hosting this for you for free, why do you think they would pay you royalties for hosting your photos?!!!
non-exclusive: This one protects the customer, not Google. This means Google is given a license but you can still give/sell a license to someone else.

"reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content"

reproduce: So Google can copy the photo files without infringing on the owner's copyright.
adapt/modify: Google will sometimes apply various kinds of "photo magic" to your photos. This allows them to change your photos for these features. Also can apply to resizing your photos for display or rotating them so the top is up.
publish: If you share your photo with other people, Google is actually publishing them. So they need to make sure they have the right to do so.
publicly perform: In case you share your video with the general public.
publicly display: Same as previous, but for photos.
distribute: Again, displaying photos to other people can be seen as distributing and Google wants to make sure they won't be sued by people for "copyright infringement" when they do just what their users asked them to do to the photos that the users submitted.

Re:oajds

[Whiteox]

Fine (and good work btw), but the intent you have shown, although admirable on google's behalf it can also be pretty dark side. The fact that copyright is still owned by the uploader may have a significant impact.

Re:oajds

[kmoser]

It's okay, they promised to not be evil.

Re:oajds

[Anonymous Coward]

You are a fucking moron. Google doesn't host anything for free anywhere. Advertisers pay Google for selling them YOUR eyeballs.

Yes, the users have already paid Google for all hosting. None of it is free.

Re:oajds

[petermgreen]

You have fallen for marketing bullshit.

Modern flash in it's raw form has some nasty properties that magnetic media does not suffer from (or suffers to a much lesser extent). The erase blocks are much larger than the write blocks and much larger than the logical blocks used by most file systems. The lifetime of each erase block is determined in terms of the number of erase cycles (unlike magnetic media which doesn't really suffer from localised wearout),flash cells can also discharge over time causing a cell to validate initially but later have errors. Shrinking processes and the use of multiple voltage levels to store two (mlc) or three (tlc) bits per flash cell improves density but at the cost of making the above problems worse.

The designers of common flash media wanted their products to be a drop in replacement for magnetic storage. The result is that the flash media contains controllers that attempt to deal with the problems of the flash and present an idealised block device to the host. How successful they are in maintaining that abstraction varies massively. It's possible to engineer in nice failure modes (e.g. turning read-only on wearout) but there is no gaurantee that the manufacturer will have actually done so. Bugs in the firmware or badly handled corner cases can easily result in data corruption.

Re:oajds

[Chelloveck]

If you didn't see the article/service, it can now classify photos so you can search by something like "car" or "red".

Ooh, if they can extend that to automatically classify photos with tags like "FFM", "ladyboy", and "bukkake" I predict a HUGE market.

An anonymous reader writes...

[Anonymous Coward]

"It's a bit creepy to see all the photos that Google still has on tap, including many that I've since deleted on my phone."

If you think that's creepy, wait until someone breaks into your account and begins blackmailing you; threatening to publish your photos of that long forgotten 'incident' which seemed like harmless fun at the time.

Re:An anonymous reader writes...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would deleting a picture on a phone also remove it on the backup device?

Re:An anonymous reader writes...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why wouldN'T deleting a picture on a phone NOT also remove it on the backup device?

Re:An anonymous reader writes...

[ledow]

Because when you accidentally delete the wrong photo on the phone, the first thing you'd hope is that you could go to your backup?

Re:An anonymous reader writes...

[camg188]

Since when has Google started deleting data?

Re:An anonymous reader writes...

[hawguy]

Why wouldN'T deleting a picture on a phone NOT also remove it on the backup device?

You're confusing mirroring with backup. If Google just mirrored what you did on your phone and deleted photos automatically when you delete them from your phone, then it's no longer a "backup device".

Though if you don't want Google to backup your photos, you can turn it off.

Re:An anonymous reader writes...

[swillden]

Since when has Google started deleting data?

Google has long allowed you to request that your data be deleted. See the Google dashboard. And, yes, it really does get deleted, permanently. I think sometimes it may survive for a while on tape backups, but eventually those get deleted, too.

Re:An anonymous reader writes...

[swillden]

"It's a bit creepy to see all the photos that Google still has on tap, including many that I've since deleted on my phone."

If you think that's creepy, wait until someone breaks into your account and begins blackmailing you; threatening to publish your photos of that long forgotten 'incident' which seemed like harmless fun at the time.

FWIW, Google Photos changes this behavior by default. I think there's a way to override it, but in general if you delete a photo in one place now, it gets deleted from all of them. There are some very prominent warnings trying to make people understand that. This doesn't apply if you've shared it, though; the shared copies still exist.

that's what spy agencies do

[martin-boundary]

It's a bit creepy to see all the photos that Google still has on tap, including many that I've since deleted on my phone

That's what spy agencies do. They keep your photos for 20 years after you've already forgotten about them, and then POW. When you step out of line and vote for the wrong person or support the wrong cause, they'll dredge them back up, and blackmail you on the basis that you were sitting together in the same bar as a known bad guy one day while you were both in college.

TANSTAAFL.

Re:that's what spy agencies do

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Pftbt, I'd be impressed if any Google service lasts 20 years.

Re:that's what spy agencies do

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only spy agencies, heck opensource organizations like Mozilla will fire you if you give money to the wrong organizations. Seriously, we are living in the liberal fascist state.

Re:that's what spy agencies do

[iluvcapra]

Pftbt, I'd be impressed if any Google service lasts 20 years.

Just because they shut down Reader doesn't mean they threw the dataset away.

Re:that's what spy agencies do

[russotto]

When you step out of line and vote for the wrong person or support the wrong cause, they'll dredge them back up, and blackmail you on the basis that you were sitting together in the same bar as a known bad guy one day while you were both in college.

"Oh, yeah, that's me and Hitler. He was one angry MF, believe me, but it was kinda fun to listen to him rant, at least until he tried to take over Munich. Got any old photos? How about that one of me and Marlene Dietrich? Whaddya mean that never happened?"

Re:that's what spy agencies do

[tlhIngan]

Not only spy agencies, heck opensource organizations like Mozilla will fire you if you give money to the wrong organizations. Seriously, we are living in the liberal fascist state.

Then do what everyone else does - donate and just check the box that marks it anonymous.

Everyone says Steve Jobs didn't donate a penny to charity, yet he did. Of course, he did it anonymously, because you never know how it's going to appear. And no, he decided his image didn't need the afterglow from the charities he gave to. I'm sure the charities wanted to publicize the fact to get some more money, but they have to respect the wishes of the donor

And plenty of people have lost their jobs doing questionable things. The key is to make it anonymous, because maybe donating to causes today may backfire tomorrow. And if charity is supposed to make you feel good, then that act should be it. Why bother making it non-anonymous, unless you intended to glow in the publicity?

Oh, and most charities do have a minimum limit for anonymous donations, but if you're under that, those donations tend to be anonymous anyways because keeping track of every $5 and $10 thing just creates paperwork. (And if you give that low, you'll end up disappearing into the noise).

Charity - you do it to feel good for yourself, not to bask in the publicity. If you want publicity, it can be bought. Even big charitable foundations don't give willy-nilly - they go through tons of due diligence to make sure it doesn't backfire. And even then, they probably give far more anonymously because it's easier cheaper and protected.

No thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd rather just use Flickr or write my own little CMS. Google, you're a bloated, shitty company now. You release flop after flop and have ruined or killed all your older good products. Your social hubris has humiliated your reputation. 10 years ago I'd be excited about this news. Now I simply don't even care.

Re:No thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you presume I'd release anything at all to anyone else? I'd write something by myself, for my needs and to cater to my preferences. It can be simple and stupid for all I care, but it would work for me and not require the complexity of scaling to a huge user base. It can rely on something like S3 for that for all I care. I would learn a lot along the way and it would all be fun. True, I would probably never get a job at Google, and I could care less. In fact I haven't had a job for a while now, and how is that possible? I happen to have been born into more luck than most, that's all there is to it. I don't flaunt it, because tomorrow is guaranteed to no one, rich or poor. My comment was written as a frustrated end user cutting right to the chase, you are the one taking it rather personally and attacking me back in such a way. Who's the arrogant one?

Re:No thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you presume I'd release anything at all to anyone else? I'd write something by myself, for my needs and to cater to my preferences.

So, all i'm hering is "i say i can make it but dont want to provide proof"

Ner ner!

[simplypeachy]

Backup...using a Google service? I prefer my backups to be reliable and private, thank you. Although hard drives do occasionally tell me "Hey, you've got a week to get your shit off me, ner ner!", at least they can't help it.

Re:Ner ner!

[Charliemopps]

Backup...using a Google service? I prefer my backups to be reliable and private, thank you. Although hard drives do occasionally tell me "Hey, you've got a week to get your shit off me, ner ner!", at least they can't help it.

But it IS reliable and private. It's only NOT private when you take the "Free" options. I've been using Google Photos for backing up my entire families photos (80gig and climbing) for years. It costs me a $1 and is as complicated as checking a box on each of our phones.

If you want something else... ok write it and stop bitching.

Re:Ner ner!

[chihowa]

But it IS reliable and private. It's only NOT private when you take the "Free" options.

[citation needed]

From the Terms of Service:

When you upload, submit, store, send or receive content to or through our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content.

Neither that, nor their Privacy Policy mention any exceptions for Photos if you pay for them. Where did you get this idea?

Re:Ner ner!

[radarskiy]

a) Think of everything people expect a photo hosting service to do. How to you think you can legally do them without those permissions?
b) Nothing in there refers to public posting that the user did not request.

Re:Ner ner!

[drinkypoo]

I prefer my backups to be reliable and private, thank you.

Privacy is a valid concern. However...

Although hard drives do occasionally tell me "Hey, you've got a week to get your shit off me, ner ner!", at least they can't help it.

I've had HDDs give me warning, and I've had HDDs fail without any warning. People have gone to their backups and found them unreadable. People have lost their tape drives, bought another one, and found out that their old tape drive was fracked and creating tapes that no other drive could read. It takes a tiered backup solution to be more reliable than Google, who will almost certainly give you months of notice before they take down a service.

Re:Ner ner!

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been using Google Photos for backing up my entire families photos (80gig and climbing) for years.

So what? I have more than 430GB of family and similar photos on our file server, which has 8TB of disks - actually it has 16TB of disks in a RAID5+HotSwap configuration. And that does not include the RAW/DNG images, which total a slightly greater amount, and are stored on an external 1TB disk which has a backup. The file server also has two backups (each 8TB) which are cycled monthly.

Oh, and your photos utterly lack any privacy (despite your amusingly mistaken assertion). Google data-mines them regularly. My photos are not exposed to Google at all, except probably those few that are also published on our web server (separate machine, 1TB disk+backup).

Re:Ner ner!

[iluvcapra]

Think of everything people expect a photo hosting service to do. How to you think you can legally do them without those permissions?

The demands they make are ridiculously broad, not only do they ask for the right to take anything you upload and repurpose it in whatever way they please, they even demand this on the part of their partners, "those we work with." A picture (which you thought you deleted) of you and your ex-girlfriend at the zoo appears on a Samsung phone in an ad? Covered under the agreement. Can you tell me any other photo sharing service that demands this?

Apple's language on this point is instructive:

2. Changes to Content. You understand that in order to provide the Service and make your Content available thereon, Apple may transmit your Content across various public networks, in various media, and modify or change your Content to comply with technical requirements of connecting networks or devices or computers. You agree that the license herein permits Apple to take any such actions.

That's it, that's all you need.

Really important point: someone who holds media for someone else doesn't need to obtain any kind of license. You only need a license if you want to be able to make copies of something and put them in public for your own purposes.

Re:Ner ner!

[Anonymous Coward]

You are spouting FUD - pure and simple.

Google requires those permissions in order to deliver the service on your behalf.

You retain full copyright of all photos you upload. They can't just take them and use them for some advertising purpose without your
explicit consent.

Re:Ner ner!

[Anonymous Coward]

Please cite a real example of Google using a photo in advertising without the copyright holder's consent.

Think of everything people expect a photo hosting service to do. How to you think you can legally do them without those permissions?

The demands they make are ridiculously broad, not only do they ask for the right to take anything you upload and repurpose it in whatever way they please, they even demand this on the part of their partners, "those we work with." A picture (which you thought you deleted) of you and your ex-girlfriend at the zoo appears on a Samsung phone in an ad? Covered under the agreement. Can you tell me any other photo sharing service that demands this?

Apple's language on this point is instructive:

2. Changes to Content. You understand that in order to provide the Service and make your Content available thereon, Apple may transmit your Content across various public networks, in various media, and modify or change your Content to comply with technical requirements of connecting networks or devices or computers. You agree that the license herein permits Apple to take any such actions.

That's it, that's all you need.

Really important point: someone who holds media for someone else doesn't need to obtain any kind of license. You only need a license if you want to be able to make copies of something and put them in public for your own purposes.

Re:Ner ner!

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh? You're a shill or fanboy - pure and simple.

They don't need such a broad license to store, transmit, or render files on your behalf. Read the post above that compares it to Apple's very narrow license.

They specifically can "just take them and use them for some advertising purpose without your
explicit consent." You gave them license to do just that. Reread the license that you granted them.

Re: Ner ner!

[Namarrgon]

Selective much? You missed the sentance before:

You retain ownership of any intellectual property rights that you hold in that content. In short, what belongs to you stays yours.

and particularly the sentance immediately after:

The rights you grant in this license are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting, and improving our Services, and to develop new ones.

So no, they can't do anything they like with your content. Worst they can do is use it in an ad for the Photos service, or use it in a training dataset.

Re: Ner ner!

[chihowa]

Did you even read my post? I was contesting the idea that paying for service from Google gets you any different treatment than using their "free" service.

The post to which I was responding, which I explicitly quoted said:

But it IS reliable and private. It's only NOT private when you take the "Free" options.

Re:Ner ner!

[radarskiy]

"they even demand this on the part of their partners"

Because otherwise they would never be able to add anything that involved anyone else ever without asking for new permissions at any change and supporting all possible combinations of acceptance and rejection. Want to add an "Export to Facebook" bridge? Can't do it, no license. Want to apply Instagram filters and bring it back into Google Photos? Can't do it, no license.

That bit of Apple's license is only good by itself if they don't interoperate with anything else.

" You only need a license if you want to be able to make copies of something and put them in public for your own purposes"

No they need at license to do that for any purpose. You want to send a link to someone for a picture you have in Google Photos? If someone follows that link that's a public display and Google needs a license to show the picture to them or else it is a copyright violation.

Re:Ner ner!

[radarskiy]

"Please cite a real example"

Strictly speaking that's not a relevant counterargument since the question is about what could or couldn't they do not what are or aren't they doing.

Re:Ner ner!

[iluvcapra]

No they need at license to do that for any purpose. You want to send a link to someone for a picture you have in Google Photos? If someone follows that link that's a public display and Google needs a license to show the picture to them or else it is a copyright violation.

Copyright doesn't work like that, if you send a link to someone you are the one making the copy, not Google. All of the technical operations Google performs on your behalf are copies you are making, with Google as an agent; if you distribute a copyright image this way, you're the one that's liable, not Google, they're safe-harbored.

The relevant statute is Title 17 USC Section 512, the Transitory Network and System Cacheing safe harbor provisions of the DMCA. A service provider, like Google, may pass copyrighted works on the network, manipulate them and cache them without incurring any civil liability.

Re: Ner ner!

[tlhIngan]

The rights you grant in this license are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting, and improving our Services, and to develop new ones.

So no, they can't do anything they like with your content. Worst they can do is use it in an ad for the Photos service, or use it in a training dataset.

And what part of and to develop new ones in that sentence you quoted are you unclear about?

If they decided to launch a Google dating service, those photos could very well be used to help "develop" it (i.e., pre-populate the data set, promote it, etc). The new services is even worse as it's even more open-ended as anything could come under "develop" - use your family photo on a billboard advertising it? Promotion could be argued as a form of developing the service - growing the userbase, say.

Or if Google develops some sort of new advertising service or thing that works with third parties - could sharing the data be a form of development?

Hell, they could very well close down Photos, and re-develop Picasa Cloud or something and "helpfully" import your photos into it. As it is a new service, well, new agreement and all.

Re:Ner ner!

[simplypeachy]

> I've had HDDs give me warning, and I've had HDDs fail without any warning. People have gone to their backups and found them unreadable.

Absolutely agree here - a backup is only as good as the system used to validate it. But as we've seen since this service was mentioned, Google have already been found to be re-processing the images sent to it (I've seen mention of RAW images which were quite significantly compressed), so they're just as good/bad from a backup integrity point of view.

At least one can monitor one's own in-house disks and backups!

Whooosh!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a bit creepy to see all the photos that Google still has on tap, including many that I've since deleted on my phone.

Talk about missing the point of a backup device....

Re:Whooosh!!!!

[Bing Tsher E]

Talk about missing the point of an evidence cache.

Amen to that

[Anonymous Coward]

Try the new Google maps, when you embed it, it now only has one view onto a map (rather than one view per embed) and any selected market is lost.

Switch between street view and maps view and the location your street view is gone.

Stuff is hidden, what your maps? You click the cursor on search, and wait and a little menu 'My Maps' will drop down.
Want to edit your maps? Well you have to switch to the original map then edit, and in that edit mode you lose Satellite view now.

It's shite.

Android they're only just adding fingerprint and multi-window, split keyboard, and USB file browsing, whereas Samsung has had these for years.
It still doesn't play nicely with network drives insisting you store your stuff in Google spy cloud.

Face it, they have jumped the shark.

Re:Amen to that

[Bing Tsher E]

Google bought QuickOffice, which has been a third party office compatable since the PalmPilot days, and reconfigured it to only load files from Google Drive. Forget about using it with the files you have on your SD card. "SD card??? What is that? You're not supposed to have an SD slot. You're just being all obsolete!"

Re:Amen to that

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone else that hates the new maps? I love you.

There is such a shit-maddening amount of things they have made worse with the new iteration of maps.
They wanted to make a tablet friendly site, they ended up making it use MORE resources, run slower, and look uglier. HOW?!
How do they manage to fuck things up that hard?

General slowdown on all their sites as well.
All thanks to Googles quality scripters writing enclosure-heavy code. The very thing that bogs JavaScript down to snail-like speeds, they have plenty of it and even some to spare.
That nice snappy old Gmail, slow as hell thanks to the above.
Everything they "upgrade" just gets immensely worse.

Also, the bit about Samsung tablets is the reason I went with them over generic Android tablets.
People can say what they want about Samsung, but they sure do actually put some damn effort in. (b-b-b-but fragmentation!! Oh you mean the thing Google did with the new HTML spec, now-HTML5?)
That multi-window thing has been so damn useful for me over the years.
Especially useful being able to pin a window to always be on top, so windows that don't support multi-window won't get in the way. (drawing app plus reference image was a common use-case for me)
I got a backup tablet, generic Android this time since it was nice and cheap, holy hell vanilla is awful. I do not see why people like that trash. Redundancy, redundancy and awful UI. The Samsung clock-menu is immensely more useful.

After Google killed off Wave so quickly, and Notes, I was done.
Wave, another nuGoogle'd product that was filled with enclosure-heavy code, which is why it was so stupidly laggy, in addition to event-handler abuse instead of using a common monitoring thread to watch the whole document for state-changes.
Google. Never again.
Just like Seagate and Belkin. Learn, don't waste time and money. No, that "cheaper" drive will only cost you more in the long run. Buy anything but Seagate. Let them improve or die out already. Let them die. LET THEM DIE!

Re:Amen to that

[Anonymous Coward]

I switched to Apple Maps from Google Maps because I got sick of seeing a picture of a fucking pizza on every map I look at. No, Google, I don't want to read restaurant reviews for pizza parlors in this part of the Saharan desert. And that is the problem with get your map service from an advertising company.

Until Google closes it...

[John Allsup]

The trouble with the 'backup' claim is that a Google cloud service may suffer a permanent failure upon a behind-closed-doors business decision, with potentially little warning. If Seagate, say, could instruct your usb hdd to brick itself, would you use it for backup? The Cloud is convenient in the short term, but business reality means it must be thought of as 'may fail for no reason'.

Re:Until Google closes it...

[webmistressrachel]

Who the fuck are you? Go die in a fire, you disrespectful worthless turd.

Next you'll be shouting web developers down for not using an automated tool like Dreamweaver, or advocating driverless cars with no manual controls. Our forefathers and our freedom are closely connected, forget one, you may as well forget the other. Long live text only devices! Long live being able to connect from anywhere, with anything, and participate based on one's intellectual prowess rather than one's socio-economic status!

Re:Until Google closes it...

[John Allsup]

Calm down dear, it's just the 'code' setting in User->Accounts->Post. (Having grown up with text mode, I kind of have a nostalgic attachment to monospaced text -- you might guess that from my /. UID)

Re:Until Google closes it...

[Charliemopps]

The trouble with the 'backup' claim is that a Google cloud service may suffer a permanent failure upon a behind-closed-doors business decision, with potentially little warning. If Seagate, say, could instruct your usb hdd to brick itself, would you use it for backup? The Cloud is convenient in the short term, but business reality means it must be thought of as 'may fail for no reason'.

wtf are you talking about? Name any other backup scheme that wouldn't suffer the exact same potential disaster? Even if you set it up yourself in your own house on your own network that could happen. The difference is Googles far less likely to have that sort of problem than the NAS you bought off Newegg did.

If you REALLY wanted to protect your data, you'd back it up to both your house and google.

Re:Until Google closes it...

[itzly]

Good thing this is only used for photos, and not anything critical.

Re:Until Google closes it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I just ignore people that are so desperate for attention they post in fixed pitch for no reason. He just wants to stand out. I'm sure if /. would allow it his entire post would be 48pts blinking red with animate gifs at the end.

Re:Until Google closes it...

[Silent Node]

That really rustled your Jimmies.

Re:Until Google closes it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Tempting though it is to nastily point out why most technically inclined people here would consider you incorrect, I would recommend that you spend a few moments googling why to use plain text. Perhaps you might change your mind.

For one thing, for any who have bandwidth caps, plain text can be less than half the size of any sort of formatted email. So, it's simple consideration.

Re:Until Google closes it...

[matfud]

He is pointing out that google are renowned for dropping services for business reasons. Often with little or no warning.

Re:Until Google closes it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop posting from your shit plain text device. Honestly, shave your fucking beard and grow the ever lasting the fuck UP.

You will contract terminal cancer this year.

After that, your tendency to post insulting comments will fade, and be replaced by the increasing
realization that you are worthless and that no one in the world is going to regret your passing.

Re:Until Google closes it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh...  They're quite clueless, aren't they?  But then you can't really expect any better out of a Headupassian, right?

Re:Until Google closes it...

[LVSlushdat]

Yeah... Google replaces the "hardware failure" with a "business decision failure".... Same difference, your data's gone...

Re:Until Google closes it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? Name one service they dropped with little or no warning.

Re:Until Google closes it...

[AmiMoJo]

When had Google ever shut down a service with little or no warning? They always give you plenty of time, typically a year, to move somewhere else. It's annoying, for sure, but it's not like a HDD dying and taking all your bits with it.

I have maybe 100GB of photos. I could upload that lot in a couple of nights, or less than one day. As it happens I don't rely on Google to back my photos up, but if the encrypted cloud service I do use went down it wouldn't be a problem to move to a different one. It's only crazy to rely on the cloud if you somehow manage to get yourself into a situation where the cloud has unique files you don't have locally, which in the case of a backup clearly isn't the case, or if you are somehow unable to switch to another service.

Re: Until Google closes it...

[Anonymous Coward]

The 'do no evil' service.

Re:Until Google closes it...

[Oligonicella]

To mirror others, fuck self-appointed authoritarian self.

Re:Until Google closes it...

[Oligonicella]

It's of serious doubt that you would make a business decision in your own home to discontinue you own backup services without informing yourself.

Re:Until Google closes it...

[drinkypoo]

He is pointing out that google are renowned for dropping services for business reasons. Often with little or no warning.

When has Google ever dropped one of their services without providing months of notice to the unpaying users first?

Re:Until Google closes it...

[drinkypoo]

I agree with calm down, but I also agree that it's stupid. When you put your text in monospace, what you are saying is "I am a special snowflake, so you should read this text even though it is more difficult than if I didn't set a special style that I only use because I am a hipster." So if that's how you want to come across, by all means, keep setting your comments in monospace. If you've set a flag that makes all your comments enter in monospace, then you're an extra-hipster.

Re:Until Google closes it...

[webmistressrachel]

I think you took my comment as sarcasm. I am well aware of the bandwidth-saving benefits of unformatted text, I'm also a big fan of, and I make use of, the fact it's cross-platform and when paired with interpreters and interfaces written for many platforms can be used and contributed to by anyone on an equal standing. Slashdot itself is a good example of this; I can actually still post using my Nokia 6230i running Opera Mini over GPRS. I would, in fact, despair somewhat if I couldn't!

The universal participation, from anywhere, with any device theme I refer to in my OP implicitly refers to low bandwidth, low-memory, 8-16 bit CPUs, tape decks as storage, etc.

Also, why would most technically-inclined people disagree with me about Dreamweaver, et al? I thought we'd got over the "difference between tools and lazy macro code generators" decades ago... A compiler is a tool. Dreamweaver is a lego set, with no real tools for creating new lego pieces. And the lego pieces it provides are almost always much more inefficient than raw HTML, CSS and PHP code written by any half-decent developer! So whilst the majority of *drones in the current IT hegemony" might disagree with me, an educated engineer learning to program, or one very experienced, would not at all!

Re:Until Google closes it...

[Maow]

Calm down dear, it's just the 'code' setting in User->Accounts->Post. (Having grown up with text mode, I kind of have a nostalgic attachment to monospaced text -- you might guess that from my /. UID)

Well, I for one thank you for posting without the <code> tag in your post this time, and hope it's a permanent change.

Having one poster's comments show as monospaced font in contrast to everyone else's is visually disruptive and rather annoying. Unless one is posting actual code snippets.

Re:Until Google closes it...

[Whiteox]

I like serif fonts too....

Re:Until Google closes it...

[matfud]

Wow, I only had to wait a single day for an example. You have 28 days to change anything that depends on this.
http://tech.slashdot.org/story...

Re:Until Google closes it...

[PrimeNumber]

I bet you feel stupid right about now.

Re:Until Google closes it...

[drinkypoo]

Wow, I only had to wait a single day for an example. You have 28 days to change anything that depends on this.

So just to be clear, I asked when has Google shut down a service and you responded with Google shutting down a feature (SMS notifications) of a service (Calendar) and then crowed victory? What a stupid dick you are.

Re:Until Google closes it...

[matfud]

SMS notifications are a service provided by google for their calendar product. Hence they are shuttering a service.

They also shut down the SMS google query
http://www.slate.com/blogs/fut...

Or perhaps http://www.pcworld.com/article...

Why separate it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Linking it to G+ doesn't hurt the users, why go through the effort to split it off?

Re:Why separate it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because people who don't want it linked won't use it, regardless of your personal opinion.

unlimited, free?

[MobyDisk]

Hello! I am a company offering unlimited storage for no cost, and with no strings attached.

Umm... no. Frankly, I'd rather pay someone just because then, at least there is a chance, that it is an honest deal.

Re:unlimited, free?

[hawguy]

Hello! I am a company offering unlimited storage for no cost, and with no strings attached.

Umm... no. Frankly, I'd rather pay someone just because then, at least there is a chance, that it is an honest deal.

Then pay them, they have a paid option too.

Re:unlimited, free?

[LVSlushdat]

Then pay them, they have a paid option too.

And do you think that paying them will stop them from killing this service too, when they get the urge? I say STAY THE HELL AWAY!!!

Re:unlimited, free?

[tompaulco]

Which definition of "unlimited" are they using. The one where they start charging you after a certain number of GB? The one where they slow down your internet service after a certain number of GB? The one where they automatically stop you at a certain number of GB? Or is "unlimited" 15 GB, as I have seen elsewhere in this article? Surely it can't be the original use of "unlimited", meaning literally "without limit", which is no longer in use in the business world.

Re:unlimited, free?

[rossdee]

And does your ISP allow 'unlimited' uploads?

Re:unlimited, free?

[MobyDisk]

ohhhhhhh......... they mean bandwidth, not storage? I gotta RTFA.

Re:unlimited, free?

[itzly]

Umm... no. Frankly, I'd rather pay someone just because then, at least there is a chance, that it is an honest deal.

Because dishonest tricksters never take money...

Re:unlimited, free?

[narcc]

Free Candy

Re:unlimited, free?

[Anonymous Coward]

Then pay them, they have a paid option too.

Only a sucker pays Google to spy on them when they offer that "service" for free. What makes you think that paying a scammer, engaging in dishonest deals, will get you an honest deal?

Re:unlimited, free?

[giorgist]

Oh hello, this is Google. No problem, I see you give value to the idea that a payed service gives you some control. No problem, I will also make available a paid service where all you get is that warm and fuzzy feeling (in disguise). Hopefully you now feel lots better G

Re:unlimited, free?

[Sassinak]

And if you think paying ANYONE is a promise against the service shutting down for business, legal, ethical, or just pure financial reasons, then you have obviously not been around long enough.

Services come and go all the time, (payment means nothing).. so still keep some local storage around for when the inevitable shutdown, or price hike that scares you, or the terms of service you don't agree with, etc.. I think people forget that google (like all companies) are not doing these things out of the kindness of their hearts, but rather business decisions, the same way like Facebook, and many others do. But me, I will stick with good old fashioned HD/Tape because at the end of the day, EVERYONE's terms all say the same thing (you upload it, but we own it.. so suck it)

Android File Transfer is fucking dumb.

[Anonymous Coward]

A relative asked me how to get some photos off of her Nexus 5 some time ago. All she wanted to do was to copy them from her phone to her Mac desktop. The last time I had used Android, which must have been some version of Android 2, it just involved connecting the phone to the desktop computer using a USB cable. This resulted in the desktop mounting the phone as if it were an external hard drive or flash drive. Then the photos could be copied off like files typically are from any other external drive. It was perfectly seamless and just worked. But when we went to do this with her Nexus 5, it didn't work like that. We had to jump through hoops using some piece of shit Android File Transfer program for transferring off the files. It didn't just mount the phone's storage as if it were an external drive. Why the fuck would they take an approach that worked perfectly, and replace it with this stupid Android File Transfer program that was slow and worked really awfully? This is one of the worst, stupidest, most unnecessary software regressions I've ever seen.

Re:Android File Transfer is fucking dumb.

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with the old approach (USB mass storage) is that the partition first has to be unmounted from the Android system, which leaves apps without their data, or even removes apps from the OS if they're installed on the SD card, and then the user can destroy the file system by failing to unmount it from the desktop OS before unplugging the phone or remounting the file system in Android. The new approach is a file level protocol, not raw filesystem access. I do concur that it is shit though. Some alternative "rescue partitions" can still make phone storage available via the USB mass storage protocol. Another option is to install a proper file server in Android, for example an FTP server. Just be glad you didn't have to get the pictures off a Windows phone.

Re:Android File Transfer is fucking dumb.

[Anonymous Coward]

They should have allowed the USB device to be mounted as a mass storage device, but read-only.

This would allow people to copy off the files with ease, without having to unmount any partitions, and without risking any sort of damage were the device unplugged unexpectedly.

Then support the existing behavior when people do need to modify the files for some reason.

This would have been the optimal solution, rather than the shitty file transfer hack they put in place.

This is what's wrong with Google these days: instead of doing the sensible thing, they do the dumbest thing possible.

Re:Android File Transfer is fucking dumb.

[mrchaotica]

So why can't Android just use fucking Samba?!

Re: Android File Transfer is fucking dumb.

[Anonymous Coward]

So how would you handle concurrent modification of files by apps on your still-mounted file system?

Re: Android File Transfer is fucking dumb.

[Anonymous Coward]

How does that Android File Transfer program handle it?

Re: Android File Transfer is fucking dumb.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a worse idea than even the Android File Transfer app. At least AFT works over USB easily. Your idea does not.

Re: Android File Transfer is fucking dumb.

[Anonymous Coward]

I either use an on-the-go cable or scp to copy things from my phone.

Or you can always move the files to Google drive or Dropbox if time and bandwidth are less of an issue.

Re:Android File Transfer is fucking dumb.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, there are other problems, for example wanting to use filesystems other than FAT32 on the SD card, encrypting the data, or making things available that are stored in the root filesystem without exposing the rest of the filesystem. Ultimately a file level protocol is the right idea. Why they had to choose such a slow and useless protocol is beyond me though.

Re:Android File Transfer is fucking dumb.

[Anonymous Coward]

The last time I had used Android, which must have been some version of Android 2, it just involved connecting the phone to the desktop computer using a USB cable. This resulted in the desktop mounting the phone as if it were an external hard drive or flash drive. Then the photos could be copied off like files typically are from any other external drive. It was perfectly seamless and just worked. But when we went to do this with her Nexus 5, it didn't work like that.

That sounds like a Nexus problem, not an Android problem. My Galaxy S4 runs Lollipop (5.0.1) and behaves as you described, I plug the phone into my computer's USB port and it shows up as an attached device that I can browse in Explorer. I go to \Camera\DCIM and there are all the photos ready to be copied.

Re: Android File Transfer is fucking dumb.

[Anonymous Coward]

Note3 with Lollipop is the same thing... plug in the usb cable and get the option to mount either sd card in the phone as mass storage.

Re:Android File Transfer is fucking dumb.

[drinkypoo]

So why can't Android just use fucking Samba?!

Because you haven't downloaded the 'Samba Filesharing for Android' app yet. Did you even look?

Re: Android File Transfer is fucking dumb.

[Anonymous Coward]

The same way you handle concurrent modifications across a network.

This is an issue that was solved long before you were even born, son.

Re:Android File Transfer is fucking dumb.

[Gizan]

Moto G 2 (2014) and with lolipop and i just plug it in, and its an attached device. no need to select because the default option is media device.

Re:Android File Transfer is fucking dumb.

[Anonymous Coward]

I sincerely doubt that you get USB mass storage access to a Lollipop Android device. Depending on your operating system, the media transfer protocol (MTP) may be presented similarly to actual filesystem level access via the USB mass storage protocol. I'll refer you to Wikipedia for some of the drawbacks of that solution.

Re:Android File Transfer is fucking dumb.

[swillden]

So why can't Android just use fucking Samba?!

Because MTP is better. I don't know why the OP was messing around with Android File Transfer. Any modern desktop OS should support MTP, which is plug and play and much cleaner than USB Mass Storage.

Re: Android File Transfer is fucking dumb.

[Namarrgon]

Android File Transfer *is* an MTP implementation. OSX, at least older versions, did not support MTP naively.

Re: Android File Transfer is fucking dumb.

[swillden]

Thanks for the clarification. And, nice typo on the last word ;-)

Re:Android File Transfer is fucking dumb.

[Anonymous Coward]

Better to use a wifi transfer app. I use X-plore file manager which has its own wifi transfer function. You just run it when you want to copy files and connect to your phone/tablet with a web browser on your PC. It's fast, secure and doesn't require cables.

Re:Android File Transfer is fucking dumb.

[petermgreen]

I don't have any experience of mtp on mac os or linux but the windows MTP implementation sucks. For usb mass storage or SMB I can use any application that uses the normal windows file APIs to work with the files. The windows MTP implementation even when it's working* isn't integrated into the filesystem, so you have to manually copy stuff between the device and a real filesystem so I can work on it

In summary while I can see that the switch to MTP solves some problems on the device side it was a substantial downgrade in terms of the ability to mange the storage from a PC and the ability to access the storage from any random PC without a load of messing around first.

* And getting it to work can be a PITA sometimes, especially on XP where the driver is not included by default but some people seem to be having issues even on win7.

Goddamn the pusher man

[Anonymous Coward]

SteppinWolfshit is what you get when you go to the G. Like giving crack to a baby. Maybe not crack. Maybe more like cigarettes.

just a rebrand?

[Anonymous Coward]

so near as I can tell this is the exact same service as Google+ Auto Backup was, just re-branded. There doesn't appear to be any material additional functionality.

They do seem to have added re-cutting your movies into new videos which seems kind of cool in the 2 instances I've seen so far.

Yay, more separate services

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, Google needs to stop forking their own services. I've been using their ecosystem for ages, and it just gets more fragmented, more annoying, but its just one company that just keeps fragmenting it's own stuff, and isn't even consistent with its interface.

What is on there already

[blackest_k]

I just went to the site and Its already got photo's of mine from yesterday to 2009. I'm sure most of those are only good for the bin. However it could be a good thing in some cases. Say you photographed something sensitive like the police using excessive force, well that can't be deleted from your phone now.

on the other hand there are some terrible photo's such as when you accidentally click the shutter..

you might want to check to see what you're sharing with google already.

Re:What is on there already

[ColdWetDog]

Deleting most people's photos could be considered a feature, not a bug.

Re:What is on there already

[cbiltcliffe]

What the hell are you doing with your stuff? I've got an Android phone. I've got a Gmail account. I've got a 2 YouTube accounts. I take photos with my phone all the time, all of which are still on said phone. I have videos uploaded onto both YouTube accounts. I use Picasa on my PC to organize and tag photos that I took with both my phone, and my more expensive camera.

I just checked Google Photos. Squat. There's nothing there. All my photos are safely restricted to my phone and computer.

What the heck are you doing, or what settings have you configured, that have photos from over 5 years ago automatically stored in Google Photos?

Re:What is on there already

[blackest_k]

well some of them are picasa web albums , there is also an autoback on android which works in the background. Google has its dropbox folder on each account and thats not picky over what it backs up i think i had a linux distro on one microsd card and most if not all the icons (around 1000) ended up in there.

As another poster said it is a tad awkward to delete on mass the rubbish.

I really don't have 'sensitive' photo's connected to google. though so saying be careful setting up chromecasts particularly for other people as it's very easy to end up sharing your photo's on someone elses chromecast backdrop.

Re:What is on there already

[cbiltcliffe]

So basically, what you're saying is: "I uploaded a bunch of stuff to Google, and now GOOGLE'S GOT IT!!!!1!!111!1!1eleventy!1!!!"

Re:What is on there already

[blackest_k]

not really i used picasa web albums as backup a while back and google synced up a bunch of stuff, mostly junk and now its been gathered together in google photo's.

There is nothing there i am concerned about, other people may have more 'sensitive' private images that they may not want stored on google's servers.

on the other hand people lose phones or have them stolen and mostly they are concerned about the lost photo's of grand children and stuff like that. for them it's a life line they probably didn't know they had.

Picasa again?

[Anonymous Coward]

What? Where did Picasa go? Oh, right everything old is new again...thanks google!

A Data Point

[localroger]

In case anyone wonders just how teh GOOG might use your photos behind your back...

My wife uses gmail. I don't and have never had a google account, have never uploaded a photo to them or to any other web photo service. One day my wife asked me "What's that picture with your email, the Causeway?"

A long time ago, before Google bought them, I created a YouTube account and uploaded a couple of time-lapse videos of my commute across the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway. And my contact email for that account was my yahoo email account. So apparently, when I sent my wife an email the Google gophers went scampering for an avatar, and having nothing else took the sample still for one of my YouTube videos and pasted that at the top of my incoming email.

I'll leave it to others to speculate on just how this could have gone wrong. I could probably fix it since my old YouTube account has apparently been grandfathered in to a g+ or whatever account now, but I'm leaving it as is to remind me never to trust them with anything sensitive.

Re:A Data Point

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep. Likewise, once you start to use a new android phone (Samsung Galaxy in my case) then *bam* all of the most ancient -and quite possibly embarrasing- pictures that Google has ever been able to link to your account are automagically put into your phone's photo gallery. Seriously, what the fvk?!?

Suppose you were to show your wife your new phone, she may wonder: "why did you immediately put all these photos of your psycho ex on this brand new phone?". Thanks, google!

And it has deliberately been made quite difficult and cumbersome to remove these pics from the photo gallery of 'your' phone.

Re:A Data Point

[Anonymous Coward]

"why did you immediately put all these photos of your psycho ex on this brand new phone?"

"Because one day you will be my psycho ex, dear, and then you will feel content knowing that I will still have photos of you on my new phone, won't you."

Re:A Data Point

[cbiltcliffe]

I'm going to call bullshit.
Unless you've checked the box for "Allow Google to do absolutely anything with absolutely anything of mine, for absolutely any reason whatsoever."
I've never actually seen this option in Google's settings, so I doubt it's that.

I've already posted this, so here's the short version:
I've got an Android phone, Gmail account (which is linked to said Android phone), 2 YouTube accounts, both with videos uploaded, use Picasa for organizing my photos taken with both my Android phone and my camera.

I just checked Google Photos, and there is absolutely nothing there.
I have never had Google automatically copy files to my phone, even when I replaced my last Android phone with my current one, or the previous time I upgraded my phone, either. All 3 were Android devices, all linked to the same Gmail account.

So, what the hell are you doing, that Google copies undeletable photos to your new Android phone?

Re:A Data Point

[radarskiy]

What limitations had you placed on that video you posted?

Or was it really just publicly available to everyone, so you really have nothing justify your fears about privacy?

Till they're not....

[LVSlushdat]

Google is declaring that Google Photos lets you backup and store "unlimited, high-quality photos and videos, for free."

Thats until they're NOT.... Google has a VERY nasty habit of cranking up these spiffy services, running them for a while, getting everybody onboard
  with them, then turning them off.... Stay away!! STAY FAR AWAY!!

Re:Till they're not....

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot the visual aids :

RUN AWAY

Re:Till they're not....

[swillden]

Google is declaring that Google Photos lets you backup and store "unlimited, high-quality photos and videos, for free."

Thats until they're NOT.... Google has a VERY nasty habit of cranking up these spiffy services, running them for a while, getting everybody onboard with them, then turning them off.... Stay away!! STAY FAR AWAY!!

Meh.

Google shut down a raft of lightly-used and virtually unused services when Larry Page took over as CEO. Google has never shut down a widely-used service (no, Reader wasn't widely-used), and also has a habit of providing plenty of notice and options for getting your data out of every service, especially those that are being shut down.

So what's the worst case? You get a nice service for a few years and then have to download your photos and move them elsewhere. On the other hand, if this really does end up doing to on-line photo storage and sharing what Gmail did for e-mail, it will go the way of Gmail -- become a core product that is not ever going away.

Unlimited 4MP pics

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Google backup storage is 15 GB free shared across all Google+ products. Google docs, drive, photos, chats etc etc. Photos below 4MP (Says 2048 x 2048 instead of 4MP dont know why) resolution does not count against the quota. Higher resolution pics count against your quota. Storage price is 2$ per month for 100GB and 10$ per month for 1 TB. Need a credit card and auto recharge every month.

The price is not bad, but auto charge every month is a pain. I usually don't leave any active credit card number attached to my accounts (amazon or google wallet or ...) for long. Used to create virtual numbers with dollar limit and leave them on. But citi virtual cards numbers are usable by one merchant per number. Amazon has so many entities it is a pain dealing with mismatched virtual numbers.

Should create a virtual number for my google wallet with a low limit like 1000$ or so. It is crazy what laziness does to you. My IPass is on auto recharge, they don't send monthly statements, they take two to three days to post the charges, so you cant check the charges as soon as you return from a trip. Three days later you forget and you get lazy to log in and check the transactions.... Knowing how lazy I am, I am very wary of leaving an active number on a web account. Protection against being hacked and charged tons of money is purely an added bonus.

Re:Unlimited 4MP pics

[BradleyUffner]

Photos below 4MP (Says 2048 x 2048 instead of 4MP dont know why) resolution does not count against the quota. Higher resolution pics count against your quota. Storage price is 2$ per month for 100GB and 10$ per month for 1 TB. Need a credit card and auto recharge every month.

Your information is out of date now. As of Google I/O you can store up to15MP images that don't count against your quota, and unlimited 1080P videos that don't count against your quota. http://googleblog.blogspot.com...

Re:Unlimited 4MP pics

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

photos.google.com redirects to my old google+ photos with old limits. Not sure how to get to photos without the google+

If You Find Them Creepy

[Greyfox]

If you find it creepy that they keep your photos around forever, just disable the auto-backup feature in your android settings. I'm sure it's a complete coincidence that most default camera apps I've used over the years don't allow you to specify the external SD card as the location that pictures are stored.

Re:If You Find Them Creepy

[swillden]

If you find it creepy that they keep your photos around forever, just disable the auto-backup feature in your android settings

Or just delete them when you don't want them kept any more.

So Creepy!

[phaserbanks]

"It's a bit creepy to see all the photos that Google still has on tap, including many that I've since deleted on my phone."

Yeah, it's weird how when you delete files from one computer, they don't get deleted from all the other computers in the world.

Re:So Creepy!

[Rob Y.]

Well, you can go onto Google Drive and delete the backup copies there. I guess that's not so bad. I once accidentally deleted all the photos from my Camera folder on my phone when I was simply trying to delete the most recent one that the app used as a thumbnail for the folder. Stupid, yes, but it let me do it without so much as a "are you really sure?" warning - or an Undo option (which seems to be there now). I didn't have G+ backups enabled, and lost them all. If deletions automatically deleted the backups, I'd have also lost them.

What might be nice is some kind of setting to let you control automatic deletion of backups, say:
1. Provide a 'delete backup' option on the Undo screen that shows up anyway.
2. Provide a setting to just keep backups for a month or so until you go onto drive and request that then be kept indefinitely.
3. Define any photo deleted within X days of taking it as a 'reject', and then automatically delete backups of rejects. Or at least provide a way to see your rejects on Drive and easily delete them there.

Sure, Google has a bias toward keeping everything. But at some point that becomes more of an annoyance than a convenience. Gmail lets you select true deletion over archiving - and archived mail is more searchable than old photos. So why make it impossible to automatically delete stuff - if that's what the user wants.

NOT separate from Google+

[Anonymous Coward]

The summary suggests Google Photos is "completely separate from Google+". I hate to tell you, but the only photos shown on my account came from Google+. My Android phone doesn't auto-sync photos to any of Google's cloud services, so only a few of my photos are present on Google Photos. All of them came from my Google+ postings.

Therefore, I submit Google Photos IS NOT "completely separate from Google+".

No RAW, and unlimited anly for "reduced size"

[aristofeles]

Did a test, uploading from the web only is possible for RAW. And... he converted a 12M RAW file for a 68K jpg.

Why is it "creepy?"

[SirNorris]

I know the mainstream media have a rule where they have to say "creepy" in any post about Google these days. But Slashdot? Anyway, what's creepy about a website having photos YOU UPLOADED TO IT!?

photo

[JohnVanVliet]

WHAT THE "FRACK " WTF happened to all my album folders!!!!

i add images to the FOLDERS!!!!!!
now it is by date added and i add NEW images all the time !!!

so W HAT THE FRACK happened to the ALBUMS THAT I ADD IMAGES TO!!!!!

google is being a great example of a "SMEG HEAD "

Re:photo

[Anonymous Coward]

Check "Collections"

Creepy

[Anonymous Coward]

Google is becoming creepier day by day. I stopped using anything but their search engine.

Well that's not quite the point

[localroger]

The video isn't embarrassing and is publicly available, but it's not "me." There is no way I would have ever deliberately selected a pre-dawn windscreen shot of the bridge I drive across in the morning as the avatar to represent my identity for completely unrelated email. In fact, without the context of the video it's kind of a puzzle what the picture represents at all. Considering the number of reasons people upload videos to YouTube, randomly selecting a shot to use for this purpose is an incredibly stupid and invasive thing to do.

Re:Well that's not quite the point

[Anonymous Coward]

In my case, I uploaded a video of Counterstrike years ago to an anonymous youtube account. I later found out people were seeing a dude holding a knife when i emailed them. Not what I wanted to project to people, so fuck google.

To delete it took hours of work, including making a google+ account and uploading a blank image, then closing it. I also had to make accounts on other google services to delete an image I never uploaded.

picasa

[Anonymous Coward]

why don't they just update the picasa windows app with the new fancy object detection stuff and better management, that's alot smoother experience than some web crap you have to stare at spinners because it's loading the thumbnails, and then wait on it again to see the full size, and wait on it again to download it

The resolution of your image upload is limited.

[dsmatthews9379]

You get a choice when you upload to use your assigned GBs or have the image reduced and placed in unlimited storage. I uploaded a few large files and could still see all the detail when I zoomed in, so if there is a limit to the resolution it must be high and or they are using some very smart compression on them.

Unlimited Storage

[Anonymous Coward]

Google is declaring that Google Photos lets you backup and store "unlimited, high-quality photos and videos, for free.

Then someone needs to talk to their marketing people about listing limitations because the Google Play store page specifically says

Choose free, unlimited cloud storage available at high quality, or store up to 15GB original size for free (shared across your Google account).

That 15GB "limit" appears to be using the shared storage available in your account across all Google products.

Picasa Web Albums

[Anonymous Coward]

This appears to be Picasa Web Albums which I have never used and was disabled on my Google Apps/business account.

It kept saying it was disabled by the administrator so finding what I disabled (g+ is disabled too) and enabling Picasa Web Albums made it work.

Google Reader

[Anonymous Coward]

How about first bringing back Google Reader and then change the past to remove all references of G+ ....