4 ms·

Flickr's not a backup service, and from the quoted TOS: > Your photos are not removed from Flickr, only from the list of your photos. Right. You can't browse

Flickr's not a backup service, and from the quoted TOS: > Your photos are not removed from Flickr, only from the list of your photos. Right. You can't browse your old photos. Links to those photos work, but your list no longer contains them. Web 2.0 really has spoiled people. If I stop paying AT&T, they cut my iPhone service. If I stop paying for Basecamp, they cut my number of active projects (presumably, haven't checked the actual consequence.) But if you stop paying for Flickr, they still let you use up all the drive space and bandwidth you want, they just limit the number of photos they list on your account page. This somehow isn't good enough for some folks.

russss 17y ago
...and even a backup service would delete your data if you stopped paying, right?
- Kadin 17y ago
  Their terms -- keeping your data around forever, just inaccessible to you, as long as you log in once every 90 days -- is actually pretty nice for a backup perspective. You could conceivably get a Pro account, upload tons of stuff, then let it lapse, logging in periodically to keep it active, and only paying the $25 to upgrade again if you need to recover something. I doubt this is what they have in mind, which is why I don't think for a minute that they ever seriously sold Flickr as a backup service. But you could do it. I wasn't a fan of Yahoo's takeover of Flickr (I would have much preferred Google, and Yahoo could have taken that pit of dreck called YouTube), but they have managed to keep their hands off of it for the most part since then. I'm pretty sure that the current business model predates the buyout, or at the least has been around for several years now.
  - sachinag 17y ago
    I don't get the preference for Yahoo as an acquirer over Google. Yahoo has repeatedly killed internal projects in favor of acquisitions - Google, for better or worse, has a substantial NIH mentality. Sure, Flickr and Delicious haven't really innovated since acquisition, but Yahoo's at least let them stay more-or-less intact (less charitably, Yahoo's let them stagnate).
robg 17y ago
This somehow isn't good enough for some folks. Because free is still available? I had the same experience as this guy. The problem is I couldn't figure out how to recover my photos without paying, not even with FlickrDown. That somehow seems wrong to me. Hide all but 200 photos if necessary. Don't let me upload more. But don't make me pay a ransom to get at them privately. After I paid that ransom? I too moved all my photos to Picasa. Even better that it's a smoother integration with my desktop experience.
- greyman 17y ago
  But when you do want to use it as a backup, isn't picasa rather expensive? You get 1GB for free, but that's just enough for uploading smaller version of your photos. Otherwise, the price is rather high, and what's worse, you pay for disk space...so as your collection grows, you will end up paying more and more. I also use Picasaweb, but just for sharing a few resized photos with my friends. If we talk about photo backup, is there something better than Flickr? My collection is around 25GB, and grows about 5-10 GB per year.
  - robg 17y ago
    Good point. I just swap out albums as necessary with Picasa desktop. But for your use case I know I'd love to hear alternatives to Flickr. Doesn't his (and my) complaint still stand though? There are surely other ways of throttling use besides holding data for ransom. Limit to 200 public views and prevent new uploads, for instance.
nir 17y ago
Web 2.0 really has spoiled people I think it's more that Web 2.0 has allowed the spoiled people to broadcast their juvenile "Fuck Yahoo!" to the general(er) population. That said, the funny thing about Flickr is that they really don't send you a notification when your subscription runs out. The same thing happened to me (so I logged in and renewed my subscription - which surprisingly turned out more effective than blogging about it.)

russss 17y ago

...and even a backup service would delete your data if you stopped paying, right?

Kadin 17y ago
Their terms -- keeping your data around forever, just inaccessible to you, as long as you log in once every 90 days -- is actually pretty nice for a backup perspective. You could conceivably get a Pro account, upload tons of stuff, then let it lapse, logging in periodically to keep it active, and only paying the $25 to upgrade again if you need to recover something. I doubt this is what they have in mind, which is why I don't think for a minute that they ever seriously sold Flickr as a backup service. But you could do it. I wasn't a fan of Yahoo's takeover of Flickr (I would have much preferred Google, and Yahoo could have taken that pit of dreck called YouTube), but they have managed to keep their hands off of it for the most part since then. I'm pretty sure that the current business model predates the buyout, or at the least has been around for several years now.
- sachinag 17y ago
  I don't get the preference for Yahoo as an acquirer over Google. Yahoo has repeatedly killed internal projects in favor of acquisitions - Google, for better or worse, has a substantial NIH mentality. Sure, Flickr and Delicious haven't really innovated since acquisition, but Yahoo's at least let them stay more-or-less intact (less charitably, Yahoo's let them stagnate).

robg 17y ago

This somehow isn't good enough for some folks. Because free is still available? I had the same experience as this guy. The problem is I couldn't figure out how to recover my photos without paying, not even with FlickrDown. That somehow seems wrong to me. Hide all but 200 photos if necessary. Don't let me upload more. But don't make me pay a ransom to get at them privately. After I paid that ransom? I too moved all my photos to Picasa. Even better that it's a smoother integration with my desktop experience.

greyman 17y ago
But when you do want to use it as a backup, isn't picasa rather expensive? You get 1GB for free, but that's just enough for uploading smaller version of your photos. Otherwise, the price is rather high, and what's worse, you pay for disk space...so as your collection grows, you will end up paying more and more. I also use Picasaweb, but just for sharing a few resized photos with my friends. If we talk about photo backup, is there something better than Flickr? My collection is around 25GB, and grows about 5-10 GB per year.
- robg 17y ago
  Good point. I just swap out albums as necessary with Picasa desktop. But for your use case I know I'd love to hear alternatives to Flickr. Doesn't his (and my) complaint still stand though? There are surely other ways of throttling use besides holding data for ransom. Limit to 200 public views and prevent new uploads, for instance.

nir 17y ago

Web 2.0 really has spoiled people I think it's more that Web 2.0 has allowed the spoiled people to broadcast their juvenile "Fuck Yahoo!" to the general(er) population. That said, the funny thing about Flickr is that they really don't send you a notification when your subscription runs out. The same thing happened to me (so I logged in and renewed my subscription - which surprisingly turned out more effective than blogging about it.)