Google Photos

As title suggests above

The free* has a caveat to it. The free plan is such that google compresses its images with its propietary algorithm so you have a much smaller image file uploaded to googlephotos. The same is true with their videos as well, using the same technology they use for youtube

I personally cannot discern any difference in quality from images + videos uploaded to google photos though, so this is a minute point for me.

If you do any sort of photography work, and need high res .raw image file format backup, I would suggest using another cloud-based service dedicated specifically for that task

On terms of the actual PROS of google photos:

• You can view every image / video you've ever uploaded into google photos, very quickly actually and get the big picture fast.
• Has the best UI for previewing a lot of images + videos on one page compared to all other similar services
• You can share video clips taken on your phone to other people
• You can easily download an image / video album straight from their server onto your PC, which is useful if you do low-budget filming production
• You can tell it how to sync (via plugged in + wifi) ? to save on battery usage during daytime use
• Unlimited amounts of video backups for free . No other services offers this for free.
• Scales very well over time

I've tried a lot of other solutions like

• dropbox (and formerly, carosel)
• picasa (formerly google photos)
• Amazon photos
• Flickr

None of them are as good as google photos though

[Edited by Kagerjay, July 09]

The unlimited free storage will **end ** in 1st July 2021

Although Google Photos is a web based service, it is a great Picasa alternative. These are the few reasons why it replaces Picasa very well:

• Automatic photo backup (phone, computer)
• Unlimited photo storage (if you agree to Google's amazingly great compression algorithm)
• Automatic face, object and places tagging (this one is amazing and powered by Google's neural networks)
• Great search capabilities
• Sharing albums by URL to any person, no account needed for access or album/photo download.
• Shared collaborative albums
• Automatic effects (collages, filters) to photos, and what's best, automatic trip albums and videos!
• Non-destructive editing capabilities

I used to use Picasa a lot before, but since it's been discontinued Google Photos seems like the best option. The only downside might be that it's web based so you need to upload pictures first, and that sharing to other services like Facebook is either done through a Google Photos Album or by downloading and uploading each individual picture.

Their facial recognition feature is creepy. It scans every single photo, and suddenly recommends to group photos by the individual, and the thing is it's almost always perfect. Why the app scans our photos, and suggests us to group without our consent? If the suggestion feature can be turned off, at least disable it by default.

It's a great place to store photos. Organization is perfect.