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Despite Google ’s intent for its nonremittal image regard and editing app for Android , the Photos app has , over the eld , become one of the most popular photo backup religious service around . In fact , it was one of the most attractive offering for years until itstopped offering outright storagein 2020 .

That change in the tech whale ’s scheme has leave alone some space for other picture backupservices to growand showcase their offering to people . specially for people who do n’t want to give over pictures of their intact life to big technical school companies , photo backup services that focalise on privacy have become really attractive . That ’s where Ente comes in .

An exposed - source labor by Vishnu Mohandas , a former Google employee , Ente(which think of “ Mine ” in Malayalam ) offersend - to - end encryptedphoto storage across various platforms — meaning the service can not access its users ’ photos at all . The startup says it stores photos at three different locating for adept reliability and access , and the open - source nature of the labor stand for anyone can inspect the code or even spin up their own server to store their word picture firmly .

The company says all its user - facing features are action on - twist — the processing for feature article like key faces and locations , creating themes and curating memories is done locally — and the process selective information is synced with other devices using ending - to - end encoding . you could also practice natural language to explore for exposure , such as “ beach sunset in India . ”

The service of process offers a entanglement client as well as Android , Io and screen background apps , and comes with 10 GB of free reposition . user can pay for plan starting from $ 9.99 per month for 1 TB of storage , and can share one account with five the great unwashed .

In an interview with TechCrunch , Mohandas said that while he uses a lot of Google products , include Photos , the company ’s privacy practices made him uncomfortable .

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Ente , which is bootstrapped , claims it has over 150,000 registered customer who have collectively stored over 165 million photos on the app . Despite the traction , Mohandas says the company does n’t yet have any ambitions to seek out venture capital .

“ The monetary value of a company like us shutting down is really high , as all our customers would need to take off their data point . We do n’t want to take venture money at the moment and try and get growth in a manner that could leave us to shut down , ” Mohandas said .

He said the undecided - root community around Ente is strong , and all its 12 employee were previously part of the community . The company also offers dedicated funding for folks who want to ego - master of ceremonies the app .

Mohandas realizes that seclusion lineament are n’t going to be enough to deal a Robert William Service like this and says that ’s why Ente has tried to maintain feature of speech parity with serve like Google Photos . The inauguration is also considering releasing an Android app that does n’t need users to lumber in and offers photo compartmentalization features locally .