Google Photos

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Google Photos
Google Photos icon.svg
Developer(s) Google
Initial release May 28, 2015; 8 years ago (2015-05-28)
Development status Active
Operating system Android, iOS, web
Type Photo storage and sharing
Website photos.google.com

Google Photos is a photograph and video sharing and storage service by Google. It was announced in May 2015 and spun out from Google+, the company's social network. At its launch, reviewers wrote that the service was among the best of its kind.

Google Photos grants users free, unlimited storage for photos up to 16 megapixels and videos up to 1080p resolution. The service automatically analyzes photos, identifying various visual features and subjects. Users can search for anything in photos, with the service returning results from three major categories: People, Places, and Things. Google Photos recognizes faces, grouping similar ones together; geographic landmarks (such as the Eiffel Tower); and subject matter, including birthdays, buildings, non-primate animals, food, and more.

Different forms of machine learning in the Photos service allow recognition of photo contents, automatic albums, animating similar photos into quick videos, surfacing of past memories at significant times, photos and videos improvement, suggested sharing of photos, shared photo libraries between two users, with Photos automatically suggesting collections based on face, location, trip, or other distinction.

Google photos acts as a back up when photos are sent or in Google terms 'Shared', a common backup tool.

Reviewers liked the updated Photos service for its recognition technology, search, apps, and loading times. Nevertheless, privacy concerns were raised, including Google's motivation for building the service, as well as its relationship to governments and possible laws requiring Google to hand over a user's entire photo history. Google Photos reached 100 million users after five months, 200 million after one year, and 500 million as of May 2017, with Google announcing that over 1.2 billion photos are uploaded to the service every day, with the grand total of all uploaded content measuring over 13.7 petabytes of storage.

Google is known as a so-called SJW converged organization, with numerous internal debates on how to comply with the evolving strictures of political correctness. A major scandal opened in 2015, when it was revealed Google Photos's automatic image labeling service sometimes tagged photos of black people as gorillas. This was seen as highly offensive and unacceptable, causing great anxiety among the company's liberal-leaning employees. The service also misidentified white people as other races, lemurs, or wolves, but this was not considered problematic. Google's solution was to render the image service unable to identify or tag photos of great apes or monkeys, so these results could never appear again.[1][2]

Service

Google Photos is a photo and video sharing and storage service by Google. Its core features were previously embedded within Google+, the company's social network. The new Google Photos includes unlimited photo and video storage, and apps for Android, iOS, and the browser.[3] Users back up their photos to the cloud service, and become accessible between all of their devices connected to the service.[4]

The Photos service analyzes and organizes images into groups and can identify features such as beaches, skylines, or "snowstorms in Toronto".[3] From the application's search window, users are shown potential searches for groups of photos in three major categories: People, Places, and Things.[4] The service analyzes photos for similar faces and groups them together in the People category.[4] It can also group faces as they age.[3] The Places category uses geotagging data but can also determine locations in older pictures by analyzing for major landmarks (e.g., photos containing the Eiffel Tower).[4] The Things category processes photos for their subject matter: birthdays, buildings, cats, concerts, food, graduations, posters, screenshots, etc. Users can manually remove categorization errors.[4]

Recipients of shared images can view web galleries without needing to download the app.[3] Users can swipe their fingers across the screen to adjust the service's photo editing settings, as opposed to using sliders.[5] Images can be easily shared with social networks (Google+, Facebook, Twitter) and other services. The application generates web links that both Google Photos users and non-users can access.[4]

The unlimited storage supports images up to 16 megapixels and videos up to 1080p,[3] the maximum resolutions for average smartphone users in 2015.[4] Larger files use Google Drive storage space.[3] Larger photographs, typically taken by DSLR cameras, can be uploaded manually through the Google Chrome web browser,[6] or by using an app like Syncdocs which can directly transfer camera memory card photographs to Google Photos.[7]

History

Google Photos is the standalone successor to the photo features in Google+, the company's social network. Google launched the social network to compete with Facebook features, but the service never became as popular and Facebook remained the Internet's preferred website for photo sharing. Google+, however, offered photo storage and organization tools that surpassed Facebook's in power, though Google+ lacked the user base to use it.[5] The Verge praised the Google+ photos features, especially in comparison with other online photo services. They highlighted a tool that repackaged photo bursts and videos. Google spun the Google+ feature out into the standalone Google Photos service, which they announced at the company's May 2015 I/O event.[5] By leaving the social network affiliation, the Photos service changed its association from a sharing platform to a private library platform.[4]

In June 2015, Jacky Alcine, a 21-year-old African American programmer, noticed the new Google Photos app had filed a number of photos of him and his black friend in an automatically generated album named "Gorillas". After reporting, Google removed the controversial "gorilla" tag from the app and made an apology.[8][9]

On February 12, 2016, Google announced[10] that the Picasa desktop application would be discontinued on March 15, 2016, followed by the closure of the Picasa Web Albums service on May 1, 2016. Google stated that the primary reason for retiring Picasa was that it wanted to focus its efforts "entirely on a single photos service" the cross-platform, web-based Google Photos.[11]

In May 2016, one year after the release of Google Photos, Google announced the service had over 200 million monthly active users. Other statistics it revealed was at least 13.7 petabytes of photos/videos had been uploaded, 2 trillion labels had been applied (24 billion of those being selfies), and 1.6 billion animations, collages and effects had been created based on user content.[12]

In May 2017, Google announced that Google Photos has over 500 million users,[13] who upload over 1.2 billion photos every day.[14]

Reception

At the May 2015 release of Google Photos, reviewers wrote that the service was among the best of its kind.[3][4][15] Walt Mossberg of Re/code declared the service the best in cloud photo storage over its competition from Amazon (Amazon Cloud Drive), Apple (iCloud), Dropbox, and Microsoft (OneDrive).[4] The Verge wrote that the release made Google a major competitor in the photo storage market,[3] and that its pricing structure obsoleted the idea of paying for photo storage.[5] CNET said the service's phone and tablet apps were particularly good. The website added that Google Photos had a more streamlined design than Yahoo's Flickr and more organizing features than Apple's iCloud photo service.[15]

Reviewers praised the service's search functions.[3][4] The Verge noted the service's speed and intelligence, especially in its ability to sort unorganized photos, as well as its photo loading times, search speeds, and simple photo editing tools.[5] The website also compared the service's new image analysis to technology unveiled by Flickr earlier in the same month.[3] Mossberg (Re/code) thought the face grouping feature was "remarkably accurate", but was most impressed by the subject-based grouping.[4] He was surprised that a search for "boats" found both Cape Cod fishing boats and Venetian gondolas, but also noted errors such as a professional photograph registering as a screenshot.[4]

PC Magazine's John C. Dvorak was concerned about the service's privacy. He was particularly concerned about Google's motivation for building the service, the company's relationships with existing governments, and potential laws that would require Google to provide a user's entire history of photos upon request. Dvorak compared such a scenario to inviting others to "scrounge through your underwear drawer".[16] He criticized the service's sync functions, and preferred folders of images over an unsorted "flat database".[16] Dvorak also highlighted the service's poor choice of photos to animate and lack of longevity guarantees, considering the company's abrupt cancellation of Google Reader. He ultimately suggested that users instead use a portable hard drive, which he considered safer and less expensive.[16]

The Verge described the service's May 2015 release as evidence that Google is spinning out the best features of their Google+ social network. They considered Photos a standout feature of the social network.[3] Walt Mossberg of Re/code described the release as "liberation day" for the photos features that were "effectively hidden" in the "widely ignored social network".[4] The service's strategy, The Verge said, was to put all data on Google's services so that it can be accessed universally.[5]

See also

  • Picasa – image organizer by Google

References

  1. ↑ Vox Popoli blog (Jun 2018) http://voxday.blogspot.com/2018/06/that-awkward-reality.html
  2. ↑ Wired Magazine (Jan 11, 2018) https://www.wired.com/story/when-it-comes-to-gorillas-google-photos-remains-blind/
  3. ↑ 3.00 3.01 3.02 3.03 3.04 3.05 3.06 3.07 3.08 3.09 3.10 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  4. ↑ 4.00 4.01 4.02 4.03 4.04 4.05 4.06 4.07 4.08 4.09 4.10 4.11 4.12 4.13 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  6. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  7. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  8. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  9. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  10. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  11. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
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  13. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  14. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 16.2 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.

External links

  1. REDIRECT Template:Google LLC
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