Thanks for your thoughts, and for everyone who continues to comment. My wife is delighted I channeled my photo interests here, as she get sick of hearing about it!
I have always had iCloud photo library, then backed up to Google, Amazon, and One Drive. I really wanted some advice on which platform to concentrate on. The consensus is Google, & that is what I’m going to do. In fact, I cleared out my jumbled mess in iCloud photo a few days ago. I love that on mobile, you can still get the photo info on Google photos, while you really can’t on Apple’s platform. Like everyone who commented, I also think Google’s search is far superior to Apple’s.
And yes, sharing is much easier from Google, and there are several different ways to do it. I also love that they send me enhanced versions of select photos. I wish I could do that photo pop, where they keep the subject colorized, and make everything else in B & W. I’m sure that’s possible in advanced photo editors, but that’s way above my level of expertise.
I guess my biggest complaint is when I want to include a photo in an email or send one to Twitter or in iMessage, the iPhone defaults to iCloud Photos. So in effect, I have to work backwards from the Google Photo app. I wish Apple would let you pick the default photo app…
Thanks for your comments, and chime in if anyone else has some thoughts.
That was what I remember too. And afterward Apple locked things down and got way more aggressive in pushing their 2 factor. It was a long time ago in tech years… I’m gonna look into it.
Does anyone know exactly how Google says it uses your photo information? What they can see vs what’s private? I use iCloud right now. Their lower tiered storage is overpriced, and their free tier has long been a joke, but their 2 TB plan is the same price as everyone else’s, and you can share it with the family so that’s not an issue in my use case.
My 2 complaints with Google Photos is 1) I’m not sure what information they’re harvesting, what it looks like in practice, and how it affects me, and 2) I can’t find a way to delete pics from Google photos on my iPhone without the app deleting those photos from my iCloud storage too. I’d like to use it as a more curated gallery, but it gets so cranky when I tell it it can’t also delete photos from everywhere else. It’s like they’re saying “If I can’t have that photo, no one can!”
You can search and find lots of thought on this. For the most part, Google is probably scanning photos for info to target ads that might be of more interest to you. As of 2017, I read that Google Photo had over 500 million active users, uploading 1.2 billion photos a day. The thought that they are singling any one person out to spy on is pretty slim. Obviously, I wouldn’t put anything illegal or really embarrassing on there, but I wouldn’t do that with any online photo service.
I agree, it’s difficult, if not impossible to delete a Google photo and not have it delete the photo’s original in iCloud Photos. But in thinking about it, that’s kinda the point. Once it is stored in Google photos, you can remove it from your iCloud, freeing up space. If you have a photo you don’t want that to happen to, store it in iCloud drive, which I don’t think would be deleted.
I had your hesitation too. But then I listen to experts online, on podcasts, and on the TWIT network. Most all of these people who know more than me, seem to have no problem using Google Photos, and frankly, lots of other Google products.
I’m sure Apple is more private. But all this privacy PR that is now the backbone of Apple’s advertising, probably should be taken with a grain of salt. They want you to buy iCloud storage. They are basically FORCING you to buy it. I spent thousands and thousands of dollars on my current Apple products, and they still give me a paltry 5GB of free storage. There is something inherently wrong with that. Good for them, crappy for you and me.
Every time I tried to do it for the past many years, I would get a warning on Google photos saying deleting this on Google photos will delete it from iCloud. And it did. If there is a work-around, let me know!
I know when using the google photos iOS app any changes made will also affect the Apple photos app (therefore deleting your photo from iCloud). When accessing google photos via the web (www.photos.google.com), any changes made shouldn’t affect the iOS photos app. Try it!
That makes sense. It’s just more effort than I’d like to deal with. I agree that workflow makes sense for a lot of people and is actually very useful if you’re running out of device storage and can’t/prefer not to use iCloud. I think Google’s implementation using Apple’s photos pipeline is brilliant! Just not good for my specific use case.
As for privacy, It’s not so much that I’m worried about being singled out and having someone look at my stuff. It’s how my data is being used and what Google’s system might decide it knows about me based on that data. In that way it’s more about informed consent than privacy.
I tried to find articles online or even a Google explainer how exactly they use photo data, but I couldn’t find anything specific. I’m sure the answer is out there somewhere, but mostly what I find are people providing hypotheticals as an argument for or against the product.
Apple says they do not use my photo data. That is easy for me to understand and I am comfortable with that arrangement. I think it’s reasonable for Google to want something in exchange for hosting my photos for free. I also doubt their doing anything nefarious with the data they collect. I just want to understand how it all works before I use it for all my photos.
If anyone finds more information please let me know!
I just checked their site. As far as I can tell that’s still the case! Pretty good deal even as just a secondary backup, if you’re paying for prime anyway.
Also, Sorry if my comments seem confusingly out of order. lack of comment threading has really left me confused here!
This is along the lines you are talking about, but a bit off topic of strictly photos. At 60, I’m not overly concerned about how what I put online will affect the rest of my life. Yet, young people seem to have no problem using all of Google’s services, and posting every thought on FB, Instagram, etc. Also, millions of people use Google docs. My wife is a mortgage banker, and says that the overwhelming majority of information she receives from customers is via Google docs, be it personal info, or info generated from businesses. I listen to lots of tech podcasts from all the major tech news sources, and most of them talk endlessly about privacy, but as far as I can tell over 50% of them have android phones, and use Google services. In the end, I find the dichotomy interesting, if not confusing.
As a side note, I heard one privacy expert, on a podcast with Kara Swisher, liken using an Android phone to walking though Google’s offices, and yelling “here I am!” He was talking about how many times a day Google is pinging their phones for location. It was mind boggling.
Cross platform is the biggest reason I’ve chosen most of Google’s products. When hangouts was in its heyday, I used it almost everywhere. I had an iphone at the time, and I used my google voice number and hangouts to call and text people like it was my real phone. I loved that if I jumped onto my laptop, I could fire up Gmail in my browser and boom, texts incoming into hangouts. Once they depricated the functionality, that was the nail in the coffin of me using Google messaging platforms beside gmail. But I love that my iphone and laptop can access a single source of images. It’s also great for when I want to share fun things with family and friends. If I go to a concert or hang out with certain friends and we take pictures, I have share albums that we can easily go visit and catch up on.
