Sounds like you’re in my boat. I have an 09 imac. I just used an external drive
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Apple Launches Service for Transferring iCloud Photos and Videos to Google Photos
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thats exactly why I want to move my photos from google photo to iCloud photo ... but Google makes that really hard (no surprsie)
Quite a few caveats there… (e.g. edits, Live Photos)
Glad I would never want to do this. That's a dystopian transfer direction – > Google!
Does Google offer something similar to allow transfer to iCloud Photos?
Glad I would never want to do this. That's a dystopian transfer direction – > Google!
Does Google offer something similar to allow transfer to iCloud Photos?
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No way I would let Google have my photos, who knows where they would end up. If I uploaded a picture of my VFR 800, then searched Google for 'VFR 800' would my photo appear as an example?
but i thought Apple was sucking users in their ecosystem and that google is one of the good guys! /s
If you have a large photo library (tens of thousands) in iCloud, I've found the best way to download them all is by signing in to the Apple ID website --> go to Manage Your Data & Privacy --> click on Request a copy of your data --> scroll down to the bottom of the page and select iCloud Photos. Then just follow the instructions.
It may take a day or two for Apple to prepare the download, but you'll get every photo / video you've uploaded to iCloud from every device you've signed in and turned on iCloud Photos, including everything in your shared albums and from your photo stream (pre iCloud photo).
You'll get notified via e-mail when everything's ready for download.
This works pretty well (and much more complete than downloading directly from iCloud Photos) if you want to backup to a local drive for redundancy.
"do you want to donate your personal photos for computer vision research?"
I wonder if this could be related to court cases regarding anticompetitive and monopolistic behavior.
Edit
Unless Google is paying them for this, I can’t think of another good reason for them to do this.
Edit
Unless Google is paying them for this, I can’t think of another good reason for them to do this.
Have you ever tried to do that? It’s pretty much impossible with a large library.
I use both. I like that I can search for photos in Google Photos app. And by search I mean search for the word dog and I'd get all my photos of dogs. Instead of scrolling through thousands of photos in Apple's Photos to try to find one photo I'm looking for.
I think it's part the of the so called Data Transfer Project:
The Data Transfer Project was launched in 2018 to create an open-source, service-to-service data portability platform so that all individuals across the web could easily move their data between online service providers whenever they want.
The contributors to the Data Transfer Project believe portability and interoperability are central to innovation. Making it easier for individuals to choose among services facilitates competition, empowers individuals to try new services and enables them to choose the offering that best suits their needs.
I'm not 100% sure why this tool is necessary. If you install Google Photos on your device (or Google uploader on your computer) it will already do this. If your photos are stored in iCloud Photos, Google Photos already pulls the high quality version out of there to transfer over.
I'm sure there are some situations where this makes sense, like if you break or lose your iPhone and then replace it with an Android device you wouldn't have access to your iOS device to install Google Photos to make the backup.
Having said all that, I've maintained my photos in both services for years now, however, I'm leaning more towards iCloud Photos now. Google's free unlimited storage was my main reason for using Google Photos, but now that they've announced that they are getting rid of that feature, if I have to pay to store my photos I might as well pay for Apple One and get Music, Arcade, News, Fitness and storage all in one place.
I'm sure there are some situations where this makes sense, like if you break or lose your iPhone and then replace it with an Android device you wouldn't have access to your iOS device to install Google Photos to make the backup.
Having said all that, I've maintained my photos in both services for years now, however, I'm leaning more towards iCloud Photos now. Google's free unlimited storage was my main reason for using Google Photos, but now that they've announced that they are getting rid of that feature, if I have to pay to store my photos I might as well pay for Apple One and get Music, Arcade, News, Fitness and storage all in one place.
If you search your photo library, it might. Object recognition is vastly superior on Google. Don’t know if it recognises motorcycle brands and models though.
if you search the web, obviously your photo will not appear as it’s private.
The search in iCloud Photos works like that too now, though Google Photos search seems more thorough. For example, I just did a search for "tractor" in both of my libraries, and they pretty much returned the same photos of tractors or tractor looking vehicles. However, Google Photos also showed me photos of my kid wearing a shirt with a tractor on it where as iCloud Photos didn't.
I get one result for the word dog in Apple's app. A photo taken at a place with dog in the name. No dogs.
swingerofbirch
macrumors 68040
Not on the open web, but within Google Photos (assuming the letters VFR 800 are in the picture--not sure what that is). It is *amazingly* smart. Like, insanely smart. Pretty much any narrow description you can think of it will find for you. I had to return some bad yogurt and just typed in yogurt and it found the pictures of yogurt cups I had taken. It even searches within videos.
I know what people will say about privacy, etc. But I like Google, and the service is amazing. Too bad the unlimited free storage is going away.
If anyone here is thinking of migrating...
The biggest failing of Google Photos is that there is no native application to manage your library locally on your computer, like Apple has with its Photos app.
Google Photos is entirely web based and you'll always be accessing your photos in the cloud, rather than being able to keep a complete copy of your library locally. This is a massive fail and keeps me from ever considering Google Photos. It makes backing up your library properly extremely difficult.
So this is just a warning because I was downright surprised at just how inferior Google Photos is to Apple's solution. You'd think they could do better with a beautiful local application, but nope! Nothing.
The biggest failing of Google Photos is that there is no native application to manage your library locally on your computer, like Apple has with its Photos app.
Google Photos is entirely web based and you'll always be accessing your photos in the cloud, rather than being able to keep a complete copy of your library locally. This is a massive fail and keeps me from ever considering Google Photos. It makes backing up your library properly extremely difficult.
So this is just a warning because I was downright surprised at just how inferior Google Photos is to Apple's solution. You'd think they could do better with a beautiful local application, but nope! Nothing.
swingerofbirch
macrumors 68040
Doubt it's the case, but what happens if you try it in Swedish?
Data Portability was one of the recommendations set out by the House Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee last year.
It’s nice to see someone else pointing this out! Whenever I think of moving to a different platform, I more or less assume that my Live Photos will be going away. I think there are some workarounds, but I haven’t been able to test them myself.
For the record, you have access to the original data regardless.
If you "Export unmodified original" of a live photo, you get two files: The HEIC image itself, and a MOV file that is the "live" video part.
So, you can select all your live photos and mass export them to get the data. Whether another app or service can repackage it up nicely like Apple Photos does, though... That's another question.
Interesting... I am waiting for Apple to give us the feature of sharing photos with spouses. Google Photos has this feature where I can give my spouse full access to my photo stream (and me hers). Would love to have this on iCloud as my wife and I use iCloud primary now.
I see some say why isn't the reverse available? Google has a takeout feature... that's how I got my 120+GB of photos out of Google and in iCloud. ?
I see some say why isn't the reverse available? Google has a takeout feature... that's how I got my 120+GB of photos out of Google and in iCloud. ?
I think Google Photos and OneDrive (very recently) are the few that do process Live Photos? A good chunk of the rest do not.