The iOS app needs photos access because it is less a Google Photos client and more an alternative Photos app with Google Photos syncing/integration. I think it would not be ideal to use it if all you want is to export data.
(Disclaimer: I currently work for Google.)
Are you talking about the inferred bit from other sources like phone location history? My experience may have been different because I paid Google for extra storage so that I could store the original versions of all my photos (For those that don't use Google Photos, Google offers "unlimited" lossily compressed photo storage but counts original quality photos against your drive quota.)
The json data is what they display in the UI, not a verbatim copy of the metadata, but the photos have the original metadata embedded in them.
I'm happy if your files weren't put through a blender!
Unfortunately that’s partly Apple to blame, as for the longest time it was an all or nothing permission, no option for write only access.
This one's scary from an infrastructure perspective. Way too many websites depend on Recaptcha, and an outage would be somewhat painful. There aren't tons of competitors, so with Google's penchant for killing services, it puts things at risk.
Cloudflare, being the Internet security company that it is, I believe, should roll out its own captcha or equivalent solution, even if only for the traffic it fronts. They kind of have got all the tools in the bag to make a splash with such an offering.
I also find it unlikely that they move away from Google's recaptcha since they seem to have an unlimited, unrestricted (can be used for any domain) recaptcha API key that they heavily rely on for the "captcha" challenge website owners like to use.
Really, they're worse. If Cloudflare decides you should not be, you're not allowed to use the internet at all. The last thing we need is to give them even more power.
The real purpose of it is to get free human labour classifying images their ML can’t handle. Why are there so many asking you to find squares with cars, or pedestrian crossings do you think?
Seems that using Google takeout is your best bet.
If you're in the EU, I'd love to see them try and hold your data hostage as of May 2018. Was this before that time / outside of the EU?