I can't say whether Google photos us as easy use as Photobucket was, because I've not used Photobucket. For uploading, organizing, getting links for sharing individual images, Photos is as easy as Webshots used to be, but doesn't have the same sharing capability, because Webshots was more of a social media type of space, more than just photo services.
However, constant changes in the business model, services offered, and tool details could make Google Photos as frustrating as any other Google service. They keep tinkering with user interfaces, adding new things you can do, new ways to do other things, alternatives for doing essentially the same thing. For example, Photos has separate view modes for photos and albums: there are tasks you can do in photos mode that you can't do when looking at the same image in album mode. One of these used to be "add the photo to an album." But that was recently changed (at least for web access) except that the operation is different for the same task in the two modes.
The changing business model issue can be serious. You are concerned about Photobucket changing how you can use it, Google does this all the time.
Google's photo business started out as Picasa Web Albums, with organizing and editing done locally on your computer using a tool called Picasa. Picasa, before it finished, got linked for automatic uploading to Web Albums, which was kind of like Webshots, with people tagging spilling over into the Google+ social media space.
Then Google created Google Photos with lighter duty editing tools operating on their server, or on apps within Chrome, or their tablet and phone apps. Then Google eliminated online storage of Picasa Web Albums, allowing transfer of images to Google Photos with loss of classification data. Then they unlinked the Picasa application from any sort of storage in Google's cloud. I have at least 40,000 images locally cataloged in Picasa, to get them to Photos means uploading them with Photos tools.
Now there is also photo storage on Google Drive, parallel to Google Photos, with limited interaction (Photos can find and show stuff stored on Drive) and different data sharing models. What does this mean for the future of Google Photos? Will it stand as a photo service, or disappear into the Drive workplace cooperative space?
Thus for your circumstances, I can't really recommend Google Photos. All I can say is that I use it, for a few specific purposes (9000+ photos, 1500 albums). These purposes do not include archival cloud storage, which sounds like it might have been one of your uses of Photobucket. What I send to Google photos is scaled down to HDTV size, sharpened for that size, with levels, contrast and colors adjusted for typical HDTV displays. I keep the originals myself, mirrored to backup drives and cloud data storage, but not too cloud photo services.
Your 900+ photos in Photobucket will not likely transfer to a different service. I don't even know if you can download in the original file you uploaded. Most photo services compress and even re-size for customers using "free" accounts, to minimize storage space and processing for display. Some services provide archival storage of original files only as a premium service (Google Photos included).
