Every single photo and video I've ever had from the 80s to the present is on Google Photos.

When it came out years ago, it offered unlimited free storage. At the time, I had all of my digital photos and videos saved on my computer and backed up to an external hard drive. I spent a weekend uploading all of them to the service. Afterwards, I let the Google Photos app on my phone upload the pictures automatically when it charged at night.

A couple of years ago, Google announced they were going to start counting any NEW photos and videos to your Google account storage limit. I went out and bought an Epson photo scanner and scanned hundreds of old photos I had in boxes around the house. It was incredibly fast, so I was able to do about 50 photos a minute. I uploaded all of them before the cutoff.

I still keep my pictures backed up to an external drive in our safe deposit box just in case Google stops the service one day.

Any best practices for managing digital photos?

I have many many photos on shutterfly (used regularly from about 2000-2010). Many on dropbox (backed up photos there from like 2013-2018). Some on google docs. Not sure where 2010-2013 is but I'm sure there are a lot somewhere because DS was born in that period. I may actually have downloaded those onto a CD and/or thumb drive. More recently I mostly just keep photos on my phone. Shutterfly is telling me they are going to stop storing my photos unless I buy something every 18 months. The easy solution is to order some prints but then I'm just kicking the can down the road and should probably figure out a longer term solution.

What works for you?

(FWIW I have a big box full of prints from the pre-digital age... late 80s to early 2000s in my closet as well).