For those who are considering or already self-hosting, I'm genuinely curious whether it's worth the time/effort vs privacy comfort of mind? Google One prices seem reasonable (except the lack of middle tiers). Even the price aside, they also claim to not use data for ad targeting, and I personally haven't seen ads based on my media content (but obviously I'm just one anecdote).
I feel like the only real concern around Google is accidentally violating some obscure policy, and getting perma-locked out. Then why not stay on Google Photos in addition to duplicating it somewhere else, instead or moving away completely. Haven't really looked elsewhere in depth, but nothing else seems to offer even close to the polish and especially search functionality.
That does seem pretty nice for self hosting. But isn't a physical device in your house just as vulnerable to fire, water, etc damage, in which case you want another cloud solution anyways?
Google Photos was so many leaps and bounds ahead of what I was doing before to save my smartphone pictures, I'm not even thinking of leaving.
Automatic backup, dead simple albums, easy sharing, browsing on web and mobile. It may be the most satisfied I am with any Google product. Gmail, Drive, Calendar and Maps are probably the other top-tier ones. There are untold numbers of mid-tier and crap-tier ones.
I feel like the only real concern around Google is accidentally violating some obscure policy, and getting perma-locked out. Then why not stay on Google Photos in addition to duplicating it somewhere else, instead or moving away completely. Haven't really looked elsewhere in depth, but nothing else seems to offer even close to the polish and especially search functionality.