> the Takeout metadata is mostly deleted, and sometimes outright changed, from the original files. Are you talking about the inferred bit from other sources li

> the Takeout metadata is mostly deleted, and sometimes outright changed, from the original files. Are you talking about the inferred bit from other sources like phone location history? My experience may have been different because I paid Google for extra storage so that I could store the original versions of all my photos (For those that don't use Google Photos, Google offers "unlimited" lossily compressed photo storage but counts original quality photos against your drive quota.) The json data is what they display in the UI, not a verbatim copy of the metadata, but the photos have the original metadata embedded in them.