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Any idea why they built this to go straight to Google rather than just exporting in a standard format for Google to upload? There aren't any other real competit

Any idea why they built this to go straight to Google rather than just exporting in a standard format for Google to upload? There aren't any other real competitors AFAIK, but still why not just make it a simple export rather than an integration that will require continual maintenance?

lxgr 6y ago
Having both would be nice, but given the amounts of data available and the asymmetric nature of many residential internet connections, I think doing the upload themselves would be prohibitive for many users.
_jal 6y ago
My guess is this is designed for the lowest-common-denominator. Sucking down a multi-hundred-gig tarball on a phone to turn around and re-upload sounds like a poor user experience to me, and Apple has opinions about those.
lostlogin 6y ago
For me that would be a 600+ gig download. I wish I could do it, but it’s a little unwieldy.
jmfisch 6y ago
Convenience, speed, and technical difficulty (for the typical person, not HN reader). Definitely, I've faced this problem. My photo and video library on Google Photos is now much larger than the free space I have on any device. The hassle of downloading in chunks, just to re-upload (and heaven help anyone on an ISP with data caps) is huge. It's also probably very slow - consider the bandwidth between an Apple and a Google server - most likely in the 10Gbps range? Compare that with an average person doing 50Mbps down and then 8Mbps up. For a 500GB library that takes _hours_.
Denvercoder9 6y ago
> Any idea why they built this to go straight to Google rather than just exporting in a standard format for Google to upload? I'm of the (perhaps cynical) view that Apple is only doing this to satisfy their legal obligations under the GDPR, and GDPR requires direct transfer.
janaagaard 6y ago
Probably because they want this to work for people who only have a mobile device. Agree that it would be nice to have an option to download everything.

lxgr 6y ago

Having both would be nice, but given the amounts of data available and the asymmetric nature of many residential internet connections, I think doing the upload themselves would be prohibitive for many users.

_jal 6y ago

My guess is this is designed for the lowest-common-denominator. Sucking down a multi-hundred-gig tarball on a phone to turn around and re-upload sounds like a poor user experience to me, and Apple has opinions about those.

lostlogin 6y ago

For me that would be a 600+ gig download. I wish I could do it, but it’s a little unwieldy.

jmfisch 6y ago

Convenience, speed, and technical difficulty (for the typical person, not HN reader). Definitely, I've faced this problem. My photo and video library on Google Photos is now much larger than the free space I have on any device. The hassle of downloading in chunks, just to re-upload (and heaven help anyone on an ISP with data caps) is huge. It's also probably very slow - consider the bandwidth between an Apple and a Google server - most likely in the 10Gbps range? Compare that with an average person doing 50Mbps down and then 8Mbps up. For a 500GB library that takes _hours_.

Denvercoder9 6y ago

> Any idea why they built this to go straight to Google rather than just exporting in a standard format for Google to upload? I'm of the (perhaps cynical) view that Apple is only doing this to satisfy their legal obligations under the GDPR, and GDPR requires direct transfer.

janaagaard 6y ago

Probably because they want this to work for people who only have a mobile device. Agree that it would be nice to have an option to download everything.