TWiP 415 – Google Photos & the Paranoia of Free

This is TWiP episode 415 — Google Photos and the Paranoia of Free.

Photo management on the Google network has seen many incarnations and reincarnations. First there was Picasa, a strong tool that many still use today. Then there was Google+ Photos, where the company sought to tie your social photography into your social media footprint. And now there’s Google Photos ­ no more plus. But did they get it right?

I don’t think there has ever been as many choices for where we store our precious photos as there are today. We’ve got Adobe with the Creative Cloud, Apple with iCloud Photo library, Flickr with their unlimited storage and community, 500px with their gorgeous UI, Smugmug, Zenfolio, Mylio and the list goes on.

But the basic issue that many of us are struggling to solve is this…

Where do I store and back up my professional work? And how should I maintain and share my personal stuff?

I’ve been personally struggling with this problem over the past year or so, and I had high hopes that with the release of Apple Photos and the iCloud Photo Library that my problems would be solved. But upon deeper inspection, the way Apple Photos deals with folders… that is — by ignoring them — didn’t exactly work for me.

Also, Apple currently has a paid one terabyte limit. And since I’ve got decades of photos, and my data footprint exceeds 1TB, that’s also a huge limiter for me.

Now enter Google Photos and the promise of unlimited storage, cloud­-based photo editing, auto sorting and more. Again, I got excited and have tried out the service a bit. But as you’ll hear in this weeks round­table discussion, there are still some gotchas. And the same old questions about privacy, terms of service, and the fear of Google misusing our data has come up yet again.

To discuss Google Photos and other topics this week, I’m joined by the host of The Candid Frame, Ibarionex Perello. And the host of The Digital Story, Derrick Story.