How does free space in the cloud pay off?

Question

Google

How does free space in the cloud like Google photo and yahoo's flickr pay off? Google photos is unlimited and flirckr gives 1 terabyte. Today there was an infa from Google that users have uploaded 50 billion photos and videos. Not just stored, but also each photo is processed, faces, places, objects, etc. will be determined. I guess that all this is used for training, improving photo analysis algorithms, but it’s somehow debatable with such costs for storing all these photos and videos.

Answer 1

Here the question is not about payback, but about attracting users to use Google services. Their task is to provide the user with different services as much as possible so that the user remains in the Google ecosystem. Example: does the user want a cloud? Get Google Drive. There is no reason to go to Yandex disk. Does the user want notes? Get google kip. There is no reason to go to Evernot. Does the user want a wallet? Get Google Wallet. No need to switch to WebMoney. Does the user need a browser? Get google chrome.
When a user is captured by the service, he is a potential client for the consumption of advertising from Google. All these services are needed so that you tell Google about yourself as much as possible and he knows which ads are best shown.
Have you seen how the Google Photos app on iOS and Android insists that you turn on auto-upload of a photo when you create it?
Think Google cares about you? No. By uploading photos, you automatically upload information about the places you often visit to Google, as the geotag of the photo is loaded automatically. With this, it is possible to more accurately advertise companies that are close to you.
Plus, Google services have already learned how to identify commercial elements in your photos. Clothing labels, equipment and more. It all speaks about your tastes and is very interesting for advertisers.
Do you often take pictures of your cat? You will probably be interested in advertising from Google, any pet store.

Answer 2

If you do not pay, then you are a product.