Platforms that use cloud computing technology such as Google Photos they were presented at the time as the solution that would stop putting at risk the loss of our most precious information and memories.
The clearest example of these supposed benefits were, precisely, the photographs. where before having them printed in physical form risked that any oversight could ruin a portrait of which we only had that copy without the negatives.
Have these images stored on a physical medium, such as a USB stick. an SSD drive or a hard drive would put the conservation and protection of everything at risk due to the danger that this device would be annoyed.
In addition to the obvious constraints of carrying the object everywhere if we wanted to have access to the information at the time we wanted it, we needed it.
Cloud platforms would, in theory, do away with all that, as all you need is a network connection to immediately access the file or portrait in question.
In fact, for years the idea has prevailed that everything is available and safe in the cloud. But it seems that it would not always be so.
Google Photos ruined your photos if they are more than five years old in the cloud
The technical support forums Google Photos in recent hours began to fill with query threads where multiple users report that they have found that their oldest photos stored in the cloud are damaged.
The portraits that, in most cases, are at least five years old hosted within the cloud service began to present some inexplicable details.
Stains, smudges, signs of apparent rupture, as if someone had torn them if they were printed, are some of the elements that appeared in the archives out of nowhere.
The gallery of images in its thumbnails already hinted at these errors, but when opening the photo in full resolution these errors continued to be displayed, which could well be described as a kind of glitch on the platform.
For a long time Google did not give any statement about this phenomenon. But colleagues from 9to5Google have obtained an official statement from company spokespersons:
“We are aware of the problem and we are implementing a solution. The original photos have not been affected.”
This means that somewhere in the cloud the original file remains intact. That’s the good news.