I never got into Flickr, having been a loyal Picasa user since its pre-Google days. Throughout the years, Picasa did everything I wanted, and worked mostly the way I wanted (or at least could figure out and understand), so there was never any reason to look elsewhere.

If I were invested in Flickr, with years of stuff there, I'd probably pay for unlimited pro. The new owners already run a pretty decent photo hosting/sharing site (SmugMug), and if I were a Flickr user, I'd be optimistic about the direction in which they're moving things.

But as a non-user, and in limbo now with Google Plus (and therefore, the only native way to hack my own Google Photos album gallery) being discontinued, I'm facing the same issue re: where to host my galleries. ALL my photos are in Google Photos (in addition to local storage of course), so that's the easiest place for me to create my online albums. And, my family uses Google Photos, so it's the perfect place to share with specific people. But, it's a crappy place to make photos PUBLIC. So I'm stuck waiting for developers to start making cool things with the brand new Photos API and hope someone has public galleries on their radar. Or, I start using my personal blog entries as links to my shared albums, which doesnt really have a nice flow to it.

Flickr Pro and SmugMug basic plan are essentially the same price for unlimited photo storage, and both would give me a public "photo" presence. I'd actually thought about trying Flickr Pro after the announcement, but maybe the more niche, long-standing, paid-only service without Flickr's baggage (and user base to cater to) makes a more stable long-term choice. I have no photos currently in either location, so it's not about losing anything but rather about making and displaying public albums.

Anyway, I'll be interested to hear your thoughts as you work through this for yourself. It's certainly been weighing on my mind. Though, I have too many current photos to process first, before I can even *think* about showing them anywhere!