Is This the End?!

As has been discussed many other places, Google has announced that "Album Archive" is no longer going to available starting Jul 19/2023. Specifically:

Hi Tony, You’re receiving this email because you’ve viewed Album Archive recently or you may have some content that is visible in Album Archive. Starting on July 19, 2023, Album Archive will no longer be available. We recommend that you use Google Takeout to download a copy of your Album Archive data before then. Today, Album Archive lets you view and manage album content from some Google products within Album Archive. However, some content that’s only available in Album Archive will be deleted starting July 19 including 1. Rare cases like small thumbnail photos and album comments or likes 2. Some Google Hangouts data from Album Archive 3. Background images uploaded in the Gmail theme picker prior to 2018 If you would like to access this data, please make a copy of this data using Google Takeout. After Album Archive is no longer available, you can still use those Google products to view and manage some content directly – learn more. Thank you, Your Album Archive team

So what exactly does this mean? Google could have been a lot clearer in their message and pages they link to. But I have some guesses. Specifically “However, some content that’s only available in Album Archive will be deleted starting July 19...”. I think that if the “content”, in my case all those pictures on this blog, is only accessible via “Album Archive”, it will go away. But mine is not. All my content is accessible from Blogger/BlogSpot. So it should still be around July 20th.

BUT Google may not see it that way. They could have clearly stated “Your Blogger pictures are/aren’t going to be deleted”. But they did not. We are left in confusion, and I think that’s on purpose.

I think they find hosting pictures for free an annoyance and they are trying to scare people off their platform. Some percentage will leave, and they will use some other tactic to get rid of some more later. They don’t want to look like the bad guy and simply shut Blogger down because it doesn’t make money, or doesn’t make enough money. I'm not worried about losing my "content" because I keep a backup of the posted pictures, plus the unedited originals. I'm old school that way.

I will have a look at my blog on July 20th. If it’s full of broken picture links, well them’s the breaks. I’ll just shut it down. If that’s the case I want to take a moment to thank everyone for popping in to look at what I’ve posted. It’s been fun and interesting for me.

I have scheduled some posts between now and then, and they will continue as normal. Here’s hoping for the best.