i have literally never heard of this service of theirs, but this doesn't bode well.
I did my Takeout and it was just a bunch of pictures I stored in hangouts.
But i don't trust it to be just that. Google's good at killing things.
email transcription
Hi Lupi,
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
- Rare cases like small thumbnail photos and album comments or likes
- Some Google Hangouts data from Album Archive
- 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.
The last free, easy to use website builder that actually works is being pulled apart because Google decided they don't like hosting images for free anymore. This deletion of "rare cases of thumbnails" includes my entire online portfolio, website base images, and every single image anyone ever uploaded through Blogger. This isn't small stuff, this is entire websites we're talkin about here.
The old internet is being systematically deleted. Every old how-to website that's only still live because they were built with Blogger is going to be axed.
so there's a few things that always bothered me about album archive, and they relate to all the photos I've ever sent or received in hangouts (not either product named google chat)
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the album title takes the original name of a conversation, regardless of renamed individuals or renamed group chats. to be fair, you can manually edit the url to open the same album ID in google photos, which works to rename it but doesn't really support anything else one would expect from a google photos album.
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you can't... transfer the data elsewhere? like, between google accounts? you can import emails and contacts and regular photos, share your drive files and change ownership, transfer brand account(s) if you made a youtube channel via that route, but not hangouts stuff? c'mon. I don't want to use takeout just to keep it to myself!
so this solves a long standing problem for me by creating a bigger problem for anyone counting on the longevity of Hangouts photos or Blogger. also!! they didn't see fit to send me the email that @lupi got!! what the hell!!