The thing is, google guarantees 7 years of support, they can’t cancel that. The services they closed had no promise on the longevity
In 2015 Google said “With Google Photos, you can now back up and store unlimited high-quality photos and videos for free”. This is no longer true, even considering their vague corporate speak promise of “unlimited high-quality”. By Google’s own wording within the Google Photos app the options are “Original quality” or “Storage Saver”. There is no high-quality unlimited option.
But it’s not even about explicit promises. It’s about the constant erosion of user trust. Having to read into the details and interpret marketing vs legal speak does nothing to alleviate that Google has done this to themselves.
This lacks context and they did keep this promise after a fashion. They never promised it would be consistent across any phones but the pixel line at the time, and additionally never said it would continue on new pixel phones.
There’s a lot of asterisks attached to that sentence. My point being that no one wants to think about all the ways Google is going to wiggle out of its commitments each time they make a new one. It erodes trust and I’m glad that they are getting more and more negative press about it. They need to be held accountable. Their strategy of making a product at a loss while they drive out all competition until they realise it’s not a billion dollar product and promptly shut it down while shafting everyone who grew to rely on it needs to stop.
