Mainstream cloud photos
ImageTome vs Google Photos
Google Photos is the default photo library for most of the world, and it is genuinely excellent software. It is also built on the assumption that Google can read your photos, because almost everything it does well depends on being able to.
Google encrypts your photos and keeps the keys. We encrypt your photos and never have the keys.
Side by side
| Criterion | ImageTome | Google Photos |
|---|---|---|
| Encryption model | ImageTome End-to-end. AES-256-GCM in the browser, before upload. | Google Photos Encrypted in transit and at rest with AES-256. Not end-to-end. |
| Who holds the keys | ImageTome You. An RSA-4096 private key generated on your device and never sent to us. | Google Photos Google. It manages the decryption keys on your behalf. |
| What an account needs | ImageTome A username. No email address, no password, no phone number. | Google Photos A Google account, tied to your email, phone and the rest of your Google activity. |
| If you lose access | ImageTome Nothing we can do. Your exported key backup is the only route back in. | Google Photos Full account recovery by email, phone or recovery code. |
| Filenames and titles | ImageTome Encrypted. Tome names, descriptions, filenames, titles and post bodies. | Google Photos Readable, and used for search: dates, places, filenames and detected content. |
| Content scanning | ImageTome None, and none is possible. Nothing here is detected proactively, because nothing can be read. | Google Photos Yes. Faces, places, objects and text are detected to power search and Memories. |
| Video | ImageTome MP4 and WebM up to 200MB, with thumbnails generated and encrypted in the browser. | Google Photos Extensive. Long videos, editing, stabilisation and automatic highlight reels. |
| Sharing | ImageTome Invite by username. The tome key is wrapped with their public key. | Google Photos Links, shared albums and partner sharing, all readable by Google. |
| Discussion | ImageTome Encrypted comments on posts, images and videos. | Google Photos Comments and reactions on shared albums. |
| Verifying the claim | ImageTome Open your network tab during an upload and read what is actually sent. | Google Photos You cannot. You are trusting a policy, not a design. |
The difference is who holds the key, not whether there is encryption
Google Photos is encrypted. That is true and it matters: your library is protected in transit with TLS and at rest with AES-256, so an attacker who walks off with a disk gets nothing. What that encryption does not do is keep Google out, because Google manages the keys. When the keys and the ciphertext live in the same building, the encryption protects you from everyone except the people holding both.
ImageTome puts the key somewhere Google cannot put it: your browser. Your private key is generated on your device at registration and never transmitted. Every tome has its own AES-256-GCM key, and that key is only ever sent to us wrapped in a member's RSA-4096 public key, which is useless without the matching private half. There is no configuration in which we can read your photos, because there is no copy of the key on our side to misuse, subpoena or leak.
Scanning is a feature there and an impossibility here
Google's systems analyse uploaded photos to recognise faces, places, objects and text. That is how you search your library for "beach" and get the beach. In 2022 Google settled a $100 million claim in Illinois over the collection of biometric face data, and in 2025 and 2026 it rolled out further scanning of stored photos to power AI features, in both cases enabled by default.
None of that can happen on ImageTome, and not because we promise to be good. We hold ciphertext and no key for it. A face recognition model pointed at our storage would be looking at noise. This is the whole trade: you lose search inside your media, and you gain the certainty that nothing is being read.
What an account costs you
Signing up for Google Photos means a Google account, which means an email address, usually a phone number, and a photo library joined to your search history, your location history and your YouTube account under one identifier.
Signing up for ImageTome means choosing a username. There is no email field, no password field and no phone number, because the keypair in your browser is the account. There is no password database to breach here, because there are no passwords.
When Google Photos is the better choice
- If you want to type "dog on a beach in 2019" and find the photo, use Google Photos. Search inside your own media is the single largest thing you give up by encrypting properly, and Google does it better than anyone.
- If losing access to your photos would be a catastrophe and you are not going to keep a key backup safe, use Google Photos. Account recovery is a real feature and we do not have it. Losing your key here means losing everything in the account, permanently.
- If you need decades of storage across every device, automatic phone backup and editing tools, Google Photos is a mature product and we are a focused one.
ImageTome and Google Photos, asked and answered
No. Google Photos encrypts data in transit and at rest, but Google manages the keys and can decrypt your library. Google has not announced end-to-end encryption for Photos. The Locked Folder feature hides photos from your main grid but does not put them beyond Google's reach.
Technically, yes. Google states it does not sell your photos or use them for advertising, and that is a meaningful commitment, but it is a policy commitment rather than an architectural limit. Its systems do process your images to power search, Memories and face grouping.
Yes. Export your library with Google Takeout, then upload what you want kept private into a tome. Everything is encrypted in your browser as it uploads. There is no bulk importer yet, so this is a manual job.
No, and it cannot. Both features require reading your photos on a server. We can only index what we can read, and we cannot read any of it. You can browse a tome and sort by date.
Sources
- Google Photos safety and privacy features, Google Safety Centre
- Does Google Photos have any plan of end-to-end encryption? Google Photos Community
- Is Google Photos safe for private photos? Proton
- Google starts scanning all your photos as new update goes live, Forbes
Claims about Google Photos were checked against the sources above on 30 August 2026. Products change. If something here is out of date or wrong, we would rather fix it than keep it.
Other comparisons
vs iCloud Photos
Apple's end-to-end encryption is opt-in, platform-locked and withdrawn in the UK. Ours is the only mode we have.
Mainstream cloud storagevs Dropbox
Dropbox encrypts the disk. We encrypt the file, in your browser, with a key Dropbox's architecture has no equivalent of.
End-to-end encrypted storagevs Proton Drive
Proton is a general encrypted drive with an account you can recover. We are an encrypted media space with an account nobody can recover, including us.
Try the version where nobody holds your key.
One username, one tome, and a look at your own network tab to check we mean it.
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