Google is disrupting the photo sharing sites business model with Google Photos, which promises to store all pictures* taken across all devices, for free, with no limits on capacity. The service is available today on Android, iOS and the web.
Announced at the I/O Conference in the early hours of this morning local time, Google says Photos will allow users to "relive memories". When demonstrated onstage at the keynote, Google Photos was able to organise photos by date and allow the user to navigate quickly by time with a 'pinch' gesture; recognise people and places to retrieve photos in context, and even categorise all the pictures of a growing child - from newborn to much older - into the same folder. All pictures are stored in the cloud, backed up and synced automatically, and retrieved with no obvious latency.
"You don’t have to tag or label any of them, and you don’t need to laboriously create albums. When you want to find a particular shot, with a simple search you can instantly find any photo—whether it’s your dog, your daughter’s birthday party, or your favorite beach in Santa Barbara. And all of this auto-grouping is private, for your eyes only," notes Anil Sabharwal, Head of Google Photos, in a blog post.
They can be enhanced automatically and shared with others with a custom link, without the recipient requiring a password or the same app. "You can now take any set of photos and videos, or any album, and simply create a link to share hundreds of photos at once. The recipient can see what you shared without a special app or login, then immediately save the high-quality images to their own library with a single tap," Sabharwal elaborates in the blog post.
Some of these features are shared by photo sharing sites like Flickr and cloud shortage sites like Dropbox, but none go so far as to address the fundamental problem the way Google has. The premise that people take pictures so that they can later retrieve memories is a powerful one, bypassing the need to organise them that must photo sharing sites require. Businesses can also make use of the contextual retrieval to get photos of corporate milestones or of staff, so the benefits are there for commercial purposes too.
As Google points out on the official Google blog, storage runs out of space, and "it’s almost impossible to find that one photo right at the moment you need it, and sharing a bunch of photos at once is frustrating, often requiring special apps and logins".
On Google's end, this could well be another way of getting individuals better, the way Facebook knows you, in order to sell more ads. The Assistant function on Google Photos could also lead to more sales opportunities for Google, possibly through printing of albums or reproduction of images on other items like clothing and accessories.
It's a clear win win for Google and users, but photo sharing sites will need to up their game if they are even to stay in business. Google Photos is still undergoing further development, and it will be interesting to see how far Google can take this.
Want context?
Check out Sabharwal's blog post about Google Photos
Read the TechTrade Asia blog post about the Google I/O announcements
Read the WorkSmart Asia blog post about Flickr's most recent update
*Images of up to 16 megapixels or video of 1080p resolution.
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| Source: Google Photos website. |
Announced at the I/O Conference in the early hours of this morning local time, Google says Photos will allow users to "relive memories". When demonstrated onstage at the keynote, Google Photos was able to organise photos by date and allow the user to navigate quickly by time with a 'pinch' gesture; recognise people and places to retrieve photos in context, and even categorise all the pictures of a growing child - from newborn to much older - into the same folder. All pictures are stored in the cloud, backed up and synced automatically, and retrieved with no obvious latency.
"You don’t have to tag or label any of them, and you don’t need to laboriously create albums. When you want to find a particular shot, with a simple search you can instantly find any photo—whether it’s your dog, your daughter’s birthday party, or your favorite beach in Santa Barbara. And all of this auto-grouping is private, for your eyes only," notes Anil Sabharwal, Head of Google Photos, in a blog post.
They can be enhanced automatically and shared with others with a custom link, without the recipient requiring a password or the same app. "You can now take any set of photos and videos, or any album, and simply create a link to share hundreds of photos at once. The recipient can see what you shared without a special app or login, then immediately save the high-quality images to their own library with a single tap," Sabharwal elaborates in the blog post.
 |
| Source: Google Photos website. |
Some of these features are shared by photo sharing sites like Flickr and cloud shortage sites like Dropbox, but none go so far as to address the fundamental problem the way Google has. The premise that people take pictures so that they can later retrieve memories is a powerful one, bypassing the need to organise them that must photo sharing sites require. Businesses can also make use of the contextual retrieval to get photos of corporate milestones or of staff, so the benefits are there for commercial purposes too.
 |
| My live tweets on Google Photos. |
As Google points out on the official Google blog, storage runs out of space, and "it’s almost impossible to find that one photo right at the moment you need it, and sharing a bunch of photos at once is frustrating, often requiring special apps and logins".
On Google's end, this could well be another way of getting individuals better, the way Facebook knows you, in order to sell more ads. The Assistant function on Google Photos could also lead to more sales opportunities for Google, possibly through printing of albums or reproduction of images on other items like clothing and accessories.
It's a clear win win for Google and users, but photo sharing sites will need to up their game if they are even to stay in business. Google Photos is still undergoing further development, and it will be interesting to see how far Google can take this.
Want context?
Check out Sabharwal's blog post about Google Photos
Read the TechTrade Asia blog post about the Google I/O announcements
Read the WorkSmart Asia blog post about Flickr's most recent update
*Images of up to 16 megapixels or video of 1080p resolution.
posted from Bloggeroid
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