The whole point of Google Photos is that it convinces everybody to give all of their photos to Google, so Google can data-mine them.
Saying Google Photos is free is like saying that Gmail is free. Sure, you're not paying for the service itself, but you're paying with your privacy and access to the most intimate details of your personal life.
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In any case, discussions about online storage of photos isn't relevant at all to this thread, especially when the context of Photos was in searching them, which has nothing to do with how they're stored or whether they're synced.
The whole point of Google Photos is that it convinces everybody to give all of their photos to Google, so Google can data-mine them.
Saying Google Photos is free is like saying that Gmail is free. Sure, you're not paying for the service itself, but you're paying with your privacy and access to the most intimate details of your personal life.
--
In any case, discussions about online storage of photos isn't relevant at all to this thread, especially when the context of Photos was in searching them, which has nothing to do with how they're stored or whether they're synced.