I found better reception this morning. All three images back in a second
Better reception is certainly better Tim. Glad to know your late model phone can, sometimes, work as well as my ancient Android usually works on the network. 4G download speeds might be typically 5 - 12 Mbps but upload is slower, typically 2-5 Mbps and are about 7 times faster than 3G.
4g network users can experience very different data performance depending on the time of the day, weather, whether their data signals are being attenuated by a building structure, weather conditions, how you hold your Android (the antenna needs a clear path to the cell towers) etc.
I put together this list of factors as I thought about your distress and slow data to explain why your network data speeds may vary. WIFI is usually faster and more reliable (but not always).
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Are you using 3G or 4g? Some network providers still use both systems depending on where you are located in their coverage area. Some providers have data caps and throttle users after exceeding the caps and may switch you from 4g to 3g when you exceed those caps or reduce you throughput using other methods. What happens depends on your service plan.
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Depending on where you are located, your 4 g networks may operate on radio frequencies from 700+ mhz to several Ghz. Signals at these frequencies are significantly affected by weather (rain), foliage in the signal path (trees) and obstructed by buildings attenuating signal strength. (Why people often have to go outside when phoning from a large building).
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Network congestion. You share your 4g connection; lots of users and you get congestion.
A potential cause of a slow download speed while having good signal is de-prioritization. Operators “deprioritize” some users at busy times to help deal with network congestion. The de-prioritization can happen differently for users on different rate plans. -
newer hardware on the same network may perform better.
If you want to see fish fast, guess you got to wake up early.
I haven't brought up Speedtest in my browser to check download/upload speeds but probably do not need to. 
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My house is like a Faraday cage downstairs, and data is patchy even outside, we are just in a rural deadspot, despite what the network providers tell us on their coverage maps.
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@Mark_Parente I tested the download. 1-2 seconds for wifi, 4-5 for network. Note that we are also in 'rural' Tuscon, and networking doesn't really work on cold, cloudy days. Like @TIMAI2, reception varies based on everything, no matter how good of a spot the map says we are in
Well guys I had an interesting afternoon. I started out about 1pm EST. I was working on my fishing app and decided to test the image download. I was outside and had 2 bars on my phone. I read the previous message from netminderno.9apps describing his download experience. I continued to try and get images to download with no success. I tried till about 7pm, no luck. At about 9:30pm I tested again and wouldn't you guess, I finally had success with 1 to 2 bars on my phone. I continued till about 11:30pm and had no problems downloading images. So the question is, are Google's servers just overwhelmed during these times. Are they throttling bandwidth? I'm just about out of ideas. Please advise.
Thanks
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Did you read post # 43? It offers explanations for your spotty network performance.
The issue with respect to changing download responses at different times using your network data is probably NOT Google's servers. Your cell provider data plan might be throttling, not Google.
Your own small example where you provide direct links to your GoogleDrive imagesclearly demonstrates the issue is related to your network provider, weather conditions, propagation of the data at frequencies around 600 MHz , 700 MHz , 1.7/2.1 GHz , 2.3 GHz , and 2.5 GHz that are used by 4G LTE technologies (your cell's data link) etc 
. Various contributors had different experiences downloading using network. I had no issues what so ever.
After 9:30 to 11:30 pm, you got great results. Why? Because there is no network congestion? There are no micro wave radio propagation issues at that time? Your cell phone provider might not be throttling your data (not Google) etc. Why you have issues can be for many different reasons.
You might get better consistent results using a different network provider or data plan or phone or only fishing at night 
or living with how a cell data network works.
Do you have a friend with a different data provider that can try downloading at your location? Compare the results; he / she might download while you do not. If so, switch providers. If you have different providers and similar performance, blame the lack of download that is intermittent on other factors.
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I like the night fishing option. The only thing is, I got to watch out for gators. Ok, back to same issue. If I open the google sheet on my phone and click on one of the hyperlinks to fish pic I get a image to appear. I'm guessing that app inventor has some something in the background taking up bandwidth. What if I try to store images elsewhere. like one drive or drop box. can that be done in AI?
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You asked a good question. "What if I try to store images elsewhere. like one drive or drop box." Your downloads and uploads are still limited by your network's intermittent data exchange rate. Why don't you make an example app and find out. How Microsoft's OneDrive works https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/save-to-onedrive/clalmipngagbenbolclhinppjkincghn - I'm not sure you can use it with App Inventor for your purposes. Here is Taifun's App Inventor DropBox example https://puravidaapps.com/dropbox.php
You could try using a MIT CloudDB or FirebaseDB.
Instead of storing and retrieving using a GoogleSheet and GoogleDrive in your original app, you
- can store on the MIT CloudDB default server or your own Redis server. You can store small png images in a Tag without converting them to strings or having to link to them using the GoogleSheet to link to an image stored on GoogleDrive provided they are smaller than 5Mb. Store everything else to a Tag associated with the image.
- can store on information on a FirebaseDB. An extension can be used to store images I believe. Without help of an extension, Firebase can only link to an image stored elsewhere or be saved as a string representations of the images (which Tim indicates creates large files). Firebase is stored on a Google server; The CloudDB is either stored on your own Redis server (or proxy) or on MIT's CloudDB server.
Will switching to a CloudDB improve download/upload speeds to the database? Probably not. An intermittently slow/absent data network is how your network behaves when trying to upload images and is the bottle neck. The problem you face is not the GoogleSheet most likely. Changing database/storage solution is unlikely to dramatically change performance in downloading your fish. Of course you can try.
App Inventor's apps do not process in the background when compiled and does not take up band width on your network. AI2 processes asynchronously. Nothing is processing in the background. One thing happens after another in the sequence you determine with your Blocks. If you live test using Companion, since App Inventor 2 is a Web app, it does use network bandwidth.
When you
- provide a map, you use a MIT Map component that refreshes at whatever TimeInterval you provide. Whenever the LocationSensor or the built in LocationSensor in Map attempts to refresh the map on a location change or using the timer it starts a process where the Map component queries the OpenStreetMap component and the OSM server provides new or updated map tiles and transmits the map tile data to your app. You use network bandwidth while the tiles are transferred to your app.
- to upload information or an image, you use the Get component. It possibly takes a few ms to transfer whatever data you provide to your data storage. Once the command is given, the actual data transfer (which is limited by the ability of your network to handle the traffic at the instance you do the Get or Post) is out of App Inventor's purview as it watches for the server the image is located to finish sending the data. Once Get grabs the data, it posts the image to an ImageViewer without using the network.
Did this answer your question? You can start experimenting. Good fishing.
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I believe Google is doing something with their server farms. I get 1 to 2 bars and I can still surf various websites. Granted, it's slow but I'm getting data back. Going to try OneDrive and CloudDB. This is crazy.
Thank you all who responed!
Saturday afternoon, no problems downloading with 2 cellular bars. Don't figure. no answers.
Did you find out anything?
Thanks,
Mark
Well, I think I got my answer in regard to image hosting. I created an account on imgbb, and my problem with download speed remained the same. So Google drive wasn't the cause. It appears to be my cellular network speed. So we can put this baby to bed. thanks to all who participated.
@Mark_Parente Since you know that the network performance isn't great at your fishing location, have you considered downloading the images in advance as a cache? That could help you workaround speed issues. You could even do it while on a Wifi network to keep any data costs down.
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