Google Photos copies Amazon, forces video uploads
Google Photos has removed the option to back up, or not back up videos as part of what you choose to save automatically. If you’re going to back up a photo, you’re now also going to back up that 7 minute video you just took of your toes and there’s no evident way to stop video upload.
Why would they do thi…. oh yeah, money… imagine getting a warning that says your email is not going to be delivered shortly if you don’t clear some space… that’s what happened to a friend of mine when her Google Photos filled up her storage with videos of her cat over Christmas. The offer was made to her by the Goog at that point to pony up for some Google One storage, clear out space, or stop getting email.
Now, this has been Amazon Photos busines model for a while – unlimited photos, 10 gig or so free of video storage which equates to about a couple of weeks of usage for me. At least with Amazon photos, however, my email account is not threatened by a total account storage limit. I’m fine with seeing “failed to upload” and various warnings on Amazon Photos that it just can’t go on without money. There’s no easy way to delete all videos from Amazon as a note – you have to just go and find ’em and delete ’em one at a time.
For people like me, there’s no real reason to back up video. I take it, it’s done, I’ll copy it over when I want to and it’ll be backed up somewhere. My photos, man I’d miss a lot of them if they got wiped before I got to a backup location, but videos, nah.
My hope is that the forced video uploading is an accident, but in the past 12 or so years of having run into Google’s incompetent side, and into their evil side, I’m sort of betting on the evil side. There’s no reason I can think of other than cash grab to not allow not uploading videos. Even from a functional perspective using cell data to upload a 2mb photo vs a 800mb video – I don’t want to upload video off of WiFi, and there’s no option for video only on WiFi like there used to be if my memory isn’t playing tricks.
[9to5Google]
