Maybe my situation and solution might give you some insight that could help...
I was very disappointed when Google to the Google Photos folder out of Google Drive. I lived with it for a while but finally got fed up. I take a photo on my phone, it automatically gets uploaded to Google Photos. I compose an email in Outlook, click the button to attach a file to the email, there's no way to attach the photo I took without going to Google Photos Website, finding the photo then downloading it first.
I solved the problem. I'm a big Google/Android person. Most people are either an Apple ecosystem person, a Google/Android person, a Microsoft person (OneDrive) or an Amazon ecosystem person. But unfortunately in this case, Google, you lost me.
I dumped Google photos last night and switched to Amazon Photos and am SO much happier. I now have my Photos syncing back to my PC like it used to be before Google shot themselves in the foot by removing the Google Photos folder from Google Drive. One intention may be to create a stronger long-term relationship as once you don't have the ability to access your photos via file folders like you can with all your other documents (PDFs, Word Processing, Spreadsheet, etc) it's not as straigtforward to move things around and organize things let alone move to another service.
Here's the trick, when you setup Amazon Photos on your PIC, it wants to set it up as a Backup, not a Sync. That's fine if you don't mind when you want to delete something you have to manually delete it both on the PC side and on the Amazon side. What I did was:
1) First downloaded all my photos from Google via Takeout. Of course Google makes their own folder structure which was fine.
2) Searched for and deleted all the json files that Google includes and the Trash folder
3) Installed Amazon Photos and after setting it up, I removed the backup folders for Pictures and Videos it created (I can't remember if you can avoid doing this at install, I think it automatically finds the folders on your PC and adds them)
4) Enable Sync in Amazon Photos and sync your Pictures folder on Amazon to wherever you want on your PC (mine ended up being D:\Amazon Drive\Pictures as I selected D:\ as the local location to sync with)
5) Copy all the folders I downloaded from Google Takeout into the D:\Amazon Drive\Pictures
6) Download the Amazon Photos app on my Android phone and turn on automatic uploads (unless you want to manually select which photos from your phone are uploaded.) What is interesting, and kind of nice, is it puts the photos from your device in it's own subfolder under Pictures. But when you view your Pictures from Amazon Photos on the Web it's just like Google Photos in that it organizes by location, date, album with robust search.
Now if I add or delete a photo on Amazon Photos via Web, via app on my phone, or via my PC, it deletes/adds the photo everywhere inlcuding the local folders on my PC. So the D:\Amazon Drive\Pictures folder is always in sync and I can easily access my photos from any Windows app directly from that folder and don't have to mess with accessing them through the Amazon Photos website and download them. I can also access my photos when I don't have an Internet connection.
Another benefit is if you need a lot of storage (which I do), their 1 TB plan is $6.99 at Amazon as opposed to $9.99 and Google. A much better solution all around. And there are other benefits too. Sorry Google, you're not the best at Photo storage anymore. Ran across this too:
https://www.scanmyphotos.com/blog/2020/01/what-is-the-best-photo-storage-service-google-photos-or-amazon-photos.html
