Ask HN: Why did Google Photos stop allowing photo locations to be updated?

7 points

4 years ago

My dad dug up an old (analog) photo, carefully took a picture with his phone, and sent it to me. I uploaded it to Google Photos and noticed the location was set to where he took the digital photo, not where the original one was taken. No problem; I know how to update a photo's location... but apparently at some point in the past year, Google decided to block users from doing this? It says you can't edit a location if it was set by a phone.

A number of people have noticed, and asked Google for an explanation, or even just asked the Internet in general for speculation, but so far, there seem to be no answers, or even guesses: https://www.google.com/search?q=%22google+photos+can%27t+edit+locations+added+by+your+camera%22

What's even weirder is, I can download and then delete the photo from Google, update or remove its location on my machine, and then upload it right back, and then Google is happy to allow me to set the location and even update it over and over again. But that's a pain.

So, HN, can anyone here guess what possible reason Google could've had for this bizarre product/policy change?

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