How Do I Move Google Photos to iCloud and Keep the Dates?
Google's direct transfer to iCloud works, but it is not always complete. Here is what to check and how to fix the dates if your photos land in the wrong year.
You have two routes, and they fail in different ways.
The direct route is Google's own transfer service, which copies your library to iCloud Photos without you touching a file. It is the easiest option and you should try it first. It does not always move everything, though: shared albums, some videos and Motion Photos are common casualties, and people regularly find a chunk of their library missing on the other side. Count your photos on both ends before you delete anything from Google.
The manual route is Takeout, then import into Apple Photos. This one you control completely, but it walks straight into the date problem. Takeout hands you photos with no capture date inside them and puts the real dates in .json files alongside. Apple Photos does not read those files. It reads EXIF, finds nothing, and files every photo under the day you imported.
Fix the export before you import it, and Apple Photos gets it right the first time. The app writes the true date and GPS into each photo, so your Memories, your Places map and your timeline all work. Do it in the wrong order and you are re-importing forty thousand photos. The first 500 are free to test with.