My thoughts as well. It never really crossed my mind to just store all my photos in Google photos or similar service at any time. As long as I remember a backup to me has meant connecting the device to a computer with USB and backing up what I want to backup, including the devices photos. I have a friend who was telling me awhile ago how great Google Photos is and how he has like a decade of photos in there. For these kinds of people I suppose “backup” means a backup provided by google. I don’t know but I imagine people who were born into a world with phones and google have never really considered doing things with a simple USB cord and are more comfortable to go all-in with googles ecosystem. A few years ago I backed up a phone and then factory reset it as it was running like shit and full of junk and needed a fresh start. I then had issues with google which is another story but when chatting with them about it they asked “why did you reset your phone” as if it was some kind of unusual thing that I should not have done. I’m glad I am out of their whole bullshit system now. Also for OP original question if you don’t want to self host then I would suggest syncthing. Also if you want to start running services like syncthing or nextcloud / self hosting related apps, keep in mind they will likely run much better on graphene than standard OS. For example Xiaomi (and many other brands) constantly kills nextcloud, tailscale, davx5, syncthing and similar whereas graphene never does. You have full control. Personally I self host and backup with RSYNC. I use syncthing for Obsidian. 2 different immich logins: 1 for note type screenshots and 1 for regular travel, food etc pics. Syncing off.