alt Hacker NewsGoogle is no better. My family mostly uses iPhones, and on a big extended family vacation, I suggested we use Google Photos to create a shared album to document the trip. Everyone installed the Google Photos app on their iPhone so they could contribute... which resulted in all of them having their email accounts disabled.
What happened? Google Photos on the iPhone backs up all your photos by default, and, like Microsoft, Google "shares storage" between email and photos. The minute Google Photos was installed, it started backing up photos until the paltry free tier was reached, at which point it disabled the associated gmail account since it was "out of storage".
Talk about an anti-pattern; I spent a good chunk of time on that trip helping people get their storage back so they could send email again.
I'll never recommend Google Photos to anyone ever again.
Replies
> it started backing up photos until the paltry free tier was reached
How could everyone fill their 15 GiB quota when IIRC by default it only backups the camera roll with lossy compression? Also I've never heard of accounts getting disabled for filling the quota.
To be fair, Google sends out multiple emails notifying that you won't receive new emails unless you upgrade or clear things out. If they read their emails even somewhat regularly -- which I acknowledge isn't a given for many people -- they'd know what's coming.
Happened to me too, almost identically. Clearly this is a pattern across the major consumer cloud app/service providers.
Drives me insane that to see my existing Google library and shared albums I must allow Google photos access to my phones photos - at which point it turns auto back on.
Apple does the same thing with iCloud. I had to go through a lot of hoops to get my wife's photos back down locally on the computer.
It also doesn't help that Google's free tier (15GB) is laughably small in 2026.
HDD capacity and Google's profits grew many-fold since that was last increased (in 2012-ish?).
> The minute Google Photos was installed, it started backing up photos
Just to be clear: It will ask you before doing it.
If you refuse, it will ask you again and again and again. Sometimes with a slightly different prompt. Until you accidentally say yes.
But it does ask you.
Even though I agree with your overall conclusion that people should avoid google photos, this moment should also be a learning experience for your family to be more careful what they agree to. Popup fatigue is insidious, we all need to remain vigilant!