I use rclone daily. It's replaced sshfs for some cases. Another is to push home server $Archive share to rsync.net. another is to pull photos into $Archive from my Google account, my wife's, moms, dads, and kids account. Also my 3 clound account for different $WORK into $Archive (and then to rsync.net).
This I'm not sure of. I also have a habit to use Takeout quarterly (but this blob is not merged). I think I should check these configs; I want the full fidelity.
Sadly, it’s not configurable. It’s just an inherent limitation of the API (1). Takeout is the best alternative, but for something more realtime you can use tools (2) that wrap the browser UI which also exports full quality.
Running headless chrome and scraping the photos via dev tools sounds like good way to get your account banned by some automation with no human support to help you :/
It's really stupid that the API doesn't support this. For now I'll stick to regular takeout archives. Syncthing directly from the phone might be a better option for regular backups.
This is top-tier tooling right here.