I don’t want to sound like some old crazy person, but I don’t WANT my photos in the cloud. I want them on a hard drive (backed up, yes) on our home network that my wife I can both get access to from our separate Macs. iPhoto could never do this reliably. Given G’s mobile/cloud focus, is it safe to guess that Google…

Whatever solution you end using, I would recommend that you think about 'the day after' - the day after your current solution disappears. Services go belly up, software is discontinued, etc.