Why Google Photos still so expensive when storage is so much cheaper?

It is quite expensive, isn't it? I've especially been upset that they've sunset the Pixel phone benefits with regards to Google Photos.

Used to be free (okay, that was too good to be true), then it used to be discounted... and now it's nothing, really.

My greatest pet peeve with them is the fact none of the applications allow you to filter videos out of the sync. So any automated tooling will quickly balloon your Google storage out of proportion with smartphone video... and give them a reason to pressure you for upgrading.

Enough ranting, though. On the topic, due to storage being so cheap...

I've personally set up SyncThing on Android and my home RaspPi (and my desktop, and a backup), so I'm having an auto-backup without real limits (3 USB sticks for redundancy, an hour of work) - that also doesn't train AI models with my face. It's worth the effort, IMHO. Plenty of guides online, and I've had literally zero issues with it so far.

Google Photos is not only expensive but very difficult to use. Try to export photos or sort or anything and it tries its best to bar you from doing that. I'd probably just use a few extra HDs TBH.

They have no real reason to make it cheaper, do they? After working carefully to build up a monopoly, the next move is always to exploit it for maximum profit.

They do have other costs, though. You're paying for persistent storage that doesn't disappear at the appearance of the first script kiddie. That system management isn't free.

As a huge fan of Dropbox (still a paying customer), Google photos is so much better with photos. It groups photos by people, the search works flawlessly, it is efficient on a mobile phone, etc.