Dude get off the train. I run a self hosted immich instance for myself and some friends. I deleted all my Google photos from my Google account and I don't miss it. Alternatives exist. I love being able to automatically share my photos with my partner, or create shared albums that other people can upload into. All my photo syncing happens automatically via sync thing, but less technical friends use the immich phone apps and say it works fine for them.

+1

Photo storage and display is definitely a top 5 reason to self host these days. Restic and backblaze make a great off site backup solution because, like the OP said, this is important stuff.