> If you have an existing free unlimited plan they should grandfather that in.

They do. Photos uploaded before the change next year do not count.

Exactly. There's zero bait and switch here, especially when Takeout makes it so easy to export all your photos anyways.

You don't even need takeout, you can make your Photos folder appear in your Drive

They got rid of that

For now

Unfortunately there is no thing in the world that is proof from change, especially things you aren't paying for. If you have a problem with it you can use any of the other free photo upload services that will accept 15GB+ of your photos and will guarantee that free service for life.

I don't have a problem with it. This is a good thing for the industry that Google can't continue to offer unrealistic and unsustainable products for free. They set expectations that were hard to meet.

I think this serves as a warning and reminder to users.

> I think offering something for free and unlimited for 10 years and suddenly charging for it seems like bait and switch.

Wouldn't it be 'bait and switch' if they did that after less time, say 1 year? 10 years is more than reasonable. And if you disagree, that's fine, but I'm curious to hear what number of years would you consider reasonable then? I'm not excited about the news either but I think it's _fair_.

I'm not sure more time makes it better. The logic here is that they baited you for so long that it suddenly became fair?

Apply that logic to other situations and it doesn't make sense. I get that `you` may be ok with this, but it doesn't change what it is.

Regardless of whether we individually feel what is happening is 'fair', we should be able to acknowledge why someone is upset and that this is indeed a bait & switch. Customers were offered unlimited backup and storage of the photos they took. Customers used said service with that expectation, while competitors to it went out of business, and now, they are forced to pay for continued service. That is a bait & switch.

The moment we have to start saying, "well, they should have known better" or "how did you expect this to be free forever" puts us into victim blaming territory. Just because someone could have been aware of a bait & switch/scam, doesn't make that practice not a bait & switch/scam.

> Customers were offered unlimited backup and storage of the photos they took. Customers used said service with that expectation

'unlimited backup and storage of the photos' was the market pitch, whether people read the TOS is another thing. I can see why some people would feel unhappy with this and I can't blame anyone for that but on the other hand I wish we would stop taking these vague market statements at face value. 'free', 'unlimited' and 'forever' can never go together in a capitalist market. And I'll abruptly stop here because I would derail into things like law and ethics which, I think, are out of my scope.

> while competitors to it went out of business

This is honestly a tragedy that happens all across the industry at the moment.

It also means the market is opening back up. The code of projects gone by still exists, and it's not the worlds biggest effort to make a photo app.

What is the bait and switch ? The stuff you uploaded already is still free. It's for more usage.

You don't like it, you have the option to take your photos somewhere else.

People don’t join a service like this intending it to be a static archive. They were told that this was an easy way to automatically save space on your phone and protect your photos in case something happens to your phone, started building a social network with their friends and family, etc.

Now the choice is to pay or walk away.

I fail to see what's wrong with either of those options. Switching photos apps is not hard.

and you can easily download all your google photos.

(source: i did it)

It’s not hard if you have a computer in addition to a phone, enough storage to hold a full local copy, and don’t mind spending time getting all of your friends and family to switch.

I’m not sure you’ve thought through all these examples to the same degree.

> In a year they will start charging for gmail.

> In two or three they will start charging for search.

Great! They should.

They will still comb through your gmail/google docs for ad related data to serve up to you and enlarge you customer profile. Please don't be under any illusion that won't continue. They're just adding a price to extract even more money from you, not just as data source, but now as a paying customer + data source for advertisers.

> In two or three they will start charging for search

I would pay for this now if as a result google started respecting privacy.

That would țruly be an awesome offer. I'm not sure that I would take it (stingy should be my middle name) but offering it would be a very respectful gesture by Google. Follow up question: would we trust that paying changed anything?

If they start charging for search then 1/3 of Earth will use Baidu, 1/3 DuckDuckGo, and 1/3 Bing.

aka "1/3 will use Baidu and 2/3 will use Bing"

But what about Yandex?

Digital rent control is a terrible idea.

Hey, you've been breaking the site guidelines a ton lately, unfortunately. We've had to warn you about this multiple times in the past, too. This is the sort of thing we ban accounts for, and I don't want to ban you, so would you please review the rules and stick to them from now on? They are here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html#comments.