It was removed but there was a discussion about a similar account over on the Photos reddit this week. https://old.reddit.com/r/googlephotos/comments/yzz03x/it_loo...

They don't actually have to pay for it by using "domain tasting" which gives them the option to grab the domain for up to 5 days. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_name_front_running

I use Dynadot, and they actually pass the "domain tasting" on to the customer: you have a couple of days to cancel your domain registration for a full refund.

As a customer, I highly recommend Dynadot (low prices like NameCheap, but a nicer interface - I tried both registrars when I switched my domains away from DreamHost).

So just wait 5 days to register?

They re-register

You can revoke a link. Go to the shared album page. (clicking on the link will take you there) Click the options menu item and there is a toggle for link sharing that will revoke the magic url and token.

You can revoke sharing links, but there are also direct links to photos that work for unauthenticated clients. They aren't presented in the UI as a sharing option; you have to use your browser to copy the link. In other words the only way to make these links public is through intentional user action.

This shouldn't be true any more, I just tried it out by grabbing the lh[0-9]* url for the image bytes and that won't open in an incognito browser without a Google Login. Can you share with me how to reproduce this "url copy"? If you want to send it privately just tack gmail.com onto my username.

Or you can file feedback from the photo web page and just tag me in it.

I just tried it with an lh3 url I got from chrome, opens fine in incognito. Repro easily: from /photo/ page, open image in new tab; copy address to incognito; expected: login challenge, actual: photo.

Ah so it does, but that URL has a bearer token that only lasts for one minute. Try it again after a minute.

Edit: I don't work on this stuff, but have seen it challenge me when trying to do this exact thing.

Wait a company logo about javascript that uses {}? Maybe thrown into a single color circle? Mild Shock.

Edit: I will give you that their web page header and pricing looks very similar.

Lars from CatchJS here.

Anyone can go on archive.org and verify that they changed their color scheme and header to ones very similar to CatchJS in Feb 2020, after CatchJS had used that look for 2 years. Thank you for also pointing out the pricing page, where the same is true.

I've now received a cease and desist from their attorney stating that the looks are too similar. It's nice that they've paid for an attorney to make my point for me, but they seem to have mixed up who did what here.

If I had to ask for a feature, it would be to make this "layouts for the browser" instead of/in addition to "in the browser". Where the output would be html/css to do the masking so you could assign an image to each panel.

You can assign an image to each panel by double-clicking the panel and uploading the image. It does the masking through svg. You can then save off the SVG by going to preview mode and saving. Sorry that wasn't intuitive. TBH I was trying to prioritize a minimal, efficient, and effective workflow over first-time intuition. Another person suggested I make an instructional video, which is probably a good idea. I'll try to do that this evening when I'm free.

Thanks for the explanation. Single clicking on a panel and then clicking open on an image wasn't working for me.

This is awesome! I wanted a way to make a photo collage of our dog for my girlfriend and this looks like a great way to do it. Thanks for sharing!

And that was half of this post, the blog was as much about using their new product to track this problem as it was about finding the problem. Kudo's to solving a problem you find while making the product.

Talk about false advertising. I couldn't find the button that plays all of the samples at the same time.

I was hoping for that as well ... however the thing that I found was much better than my expectations. So I think it's ultimately okay.

If you still feel that you didn't get what you were looking for ... here's an acceptable substitute perhaps?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5h3qXAQOQI

I was expecting a super obnoxious brown note of every noise ever playing at once...

...but it IS still pretty cool.

I would guess that as third party cookie blocking becomes more popular, the more aggressive sites will fall back to IP tracking more often.

If I’m not mistaken, the video was made by someone else.

Correct, the video was made by: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCc5jsl5zRbbGbXO0AB4aW4w

Graham Cluley