Because the people willing to pay Google for their service don't mind the use of their pictures to better their services elsewhere. Google didn't get to be where it was without us , and the fight for privacy isn't worth it for some (most) people. Alternatives usually involve self hosting, trusting a privacy focused service , or not doing it at all. It's tiring. I respect the effort , but In a lot of ways it feels like going backwards.

That is exactly how google wanted it to be. Thy lied made everyone attached to the technology and now milking off it. Moreover I would not like google to invade my privacy if I am paying for it. I am paying and also my privacy is being breached. that doesn't seem fair

The fight for privacy is absolutely worth it. Those people have no idea about what they are getting into, they don't know anything. That is not something to base upon.

To assume that they don’t know “what they are getting into” is a bit patriarchal.

You think a random person who would never look or care about tech would understand the privacy issues? Absolutely not. All they'd know is what the companies say and advertise.

I don't agree, especially due to massive media coverage around these issues even my mom who knows nothing about tech is very hesitant to sign up with new services and existing ones changing policies and what not. Not everyone understands the privacy issues deeply, but they are at least aware and in many cases more careful than say 5 years ago.

What kind of datamining? I suppose we have no way of actually knowing if it's true, but Google does say they don't use Photos data for ads:

As always, we don’t sell your information to anyone, and we don’t use information in apps where you primarily store personal content—such as Gmail, Drive, Calendar and Photos—for advertising purposes, period.

https://blog.google/technology/safety-security/keeping-priva...

> As always, we don’t sell your information to anyone, and we don’t use information in apps where you primarily store personal content—such as Gmail, Drive, Calendar and Photos—for advertising purposes, period.

As always with privacy policies, the information is in what is NOT said.

1. They don't sell to anyone. But what giving away for free?

2. They don't use personal content for advertising purposes. But what about other purposes than advertising? For example applying face or location recognition in photos to establish a profile that is used in a fraud detection service in Google Pay?

Google, in general, does not sell or give away data. What they do is charge advertisers to target ads to users based on that data.

The distinction is that 3rd parties only have access to Google UIs or APIs based around ad targeting selectors. There is no API for 3rd parties to just download raw user data from Google.

This is in contrast to Facebook, which used to allow “apps” on their platform to suck down raw user profile data in large quantities.

It seems very likely that Google is using their user data for non-ad purposes, for example using Google Photos data to train ML image recognition engines, or using Gmail data to train conversational AI systems.

1 seems unlikely to me - why would Google do that? It would always be in exchange for something, which is pretty much selling.

2 seems more plausible.

1) I trust them when they say they don't sell it, technically.

However they probably do sell information/meta data they themselves have mined from my data, which they probably claim is harmless and de-personalized.

FB effectively gave data away to app developers (e.g. Cambridge analytica).

They got something in return - as they do with all their partners - but this is not generally considered a sale, and often not even a trade.

Users gave data away to app developers, not Facebook.

I love being able to search random things like "Honda" or "waffles" to find pictures from years ago in a few seconds. I use it often now that I can do it

Because most competitors are much more than $2/mo.

At $2 per month they are probably still subsidizing you with datamining.