Here's how I get all the benefits of Google Photos without relying on the service to be around in order to have my photos.
https://medium.com/@jmathai/introducing-elodie-your-personal...
By separate from Google Photos (because I don't know if I'll use it forever) I have all my photos automatically organized into a customized folder structure with consistent file names.
Both the ability to search/experience my photos and preserve them are important to me. I rely on Google Photos for the former.
Consider this my PRD :) -- https://medium.com/vantage/understanding-my-need-for-an-auto...
I think a good compromise is smarts in the cloud vs. local copy. I do this with Google Photos / Google Drive / Synology [1]. Apple does do this to an extent with iCloud but I haven't used that to be able to comment on how well it works.
[1] https://medium.com/@jmathai/introducing-elodie-your-personal...
There were other apps similar to iPhoto/Photos like Picassa that were less properietary. But... Google's interests didnt align with the consumer.
Apple loses points for a wonky proprietary format, but their interest in providing the product are in alignment with my interest as a consumer. And if that changes, the software doesn't go away.
The only cloud services that I'm interested in are pure commodity plays like disk, email, etc. Everything else comes with that high transition cost.
It could easily happen that Google comes up with a new product they think should replace Google Photos so that they shut down photos to force-migrate users. Wouldn't be the first time.
