It did.Welcome to Google Photos.
Googles standalone, platform-agnostic, cloud backed photo management system is finally here.
And boy its a doozy.
Lets find out more about what exactly it is and if should you jump on it.
TL;DR: The Pitch
1.
Unlimited Free Backup
Yup.
Free, unlimited backup for all your images and videos.
Yes, theres a fine print.
All the images till 16 MP will be stored in original quality and for videos, thats 1080p.
Anything higher than that will be downscaled.
But images from my DSLR will be downscaled.
Here you get 15 GB for free and 1 TB plan is $10 a month.
I dont mind downscaling from 24 MP to 16.
I love me some free, reliable cloud storage.
Much like the machine learning based scanning, Googles compression algorithms are quite sophisticated.
A lot of what the Photos app does was already possible with Google+ Photos.
Now though, Google has rinsed the+moniker off this baby and its ready to rule the world.
And backing up thousands of photos to your iCloud account costs money.
The good news for iOS users is that theres a Google Photos app and its pretty good.
Again, its a standalone app with no Google+ intrusions.
The only problem is that unlike the Android app, it doesnt have true background sync.
But thats iOSs limitation.
But once thats done, you should be fine.
Its leaps and bounds ahead of the offerings of the stock Photos app in my opinion.
You name it, Google has scanned it for all sorts of information.
Yes, thats creepybut if youve ever used Google Now, you know its also useful.
This also works based on location and time.
All of this, of course, is editable by you, the user.
The Photos app also comes with basic photo editing features along with an auto-enhance feature.
Well talk about those in detail in a future article.
Same for photos you took in New York.
And thats true with all things Google.
It just shines really brightly with Photos.
Now if youre a nervous-nelly when it comes to privacy, you probably should stay away from Google.
Yes, the service is largely free and yes, youre paying by letting Google use your personal data.
Let me just say this Photo management is hard.
So hard in fact that Ive tried to take care of it several times and then given up.
Google Photos for you, is the easy way out.
Just upload all the photos and let some computers take care of the mess.
Sharing images is also easy.
Should You Try It Out?
Because its free, anyone can use it, and everyone should.
Dropbox will ask you to pay after 2 GB, iCloud after 5 but the Photos app never will.
If youve got a photo overload, just test it out and thank me later.
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