Don MacAskill has been trying for 18 years to persuade people to pay to back up and view their photos online, as an alternative to the home hard drives or keeping everything on the phone.
November 16,2020 Don MacAskill has been trying for 18 years to persuade people to pay to back up and view their photos online, as an alternative to the home hard drives or keeping everything on the phone. As the CEO of SmugMug things got « really hard » when Google came in and changed the dynamics in 2015. He had a similar conundrum with Flickr, but that was resolved when SmugMug eventually acquired it in 2018. Google Photos, for its part, was all about free and unlimited storage, and for MacAskill, « how do you compete against free? » You don’t. Even Google this week changed its tune on that one. Google said it had over 4 trillion photos and videos on the service, with 28 billion uploaded weekly. And « in order to welcome even more of your memories and build Google Photos for the future » the company backtracked on its unique sales proposition. Beginning in June, customers will have to pay a minimum of $1.99 monthly, if not more, to store their new photos with Google. « It’s the end of an era, » says MacAskill. « Google was the last of the free offerings. Everyone else charges now for photo storage. » MacAskill hopes that by Google making this move, consumers will awaken to the perils of putting all their eggs in a bait and switch basket that starts as no cost, « because there’s just no such thing as free. » Earlier this week we, at USA TODAY, pointed out potential solutions for consumers who would like to put their images elsewhere, and not start paying Google. The obvious next best choice for many would be Amazon, which offers free, unlimited photo storage to subscribers of its $119 yearly Prime services, for entertainment and expedited shipping. Elsewhere, you’ll probably need to pay extra, whether that’s from Apple’s iCloud or Dropbox, which both charge $9.99 monthly for 2 TB of storage, or Microsoft’s 365 offering, which offers 1 TB for $70 yearly. MacAskill has a way better deal.
