

In December 2015, Google added shared albums to Google Photos. By leaving the social network affiliation, the Photos service changed its association from a sharing platform to a private library platform. Google+ offered photo storage and organizational tools that surpassed Facebook's in power, though Google+ lacked the user base to use it. Google launched the social network to compete with Facebook, but the service never became as popular as Facebook for social networking and photo sharing.

Google Photos is the standalone successor to the photo features previously embedded in Google+, the company's social network. Google reports as of 2020, approximately 28 billion photos and videos are uploaded to the service every week, and more than 4 trillion photos are stored in the service total. It reached 100 million users after five months, 200 million after one year, 500 million after two years, and passed the 1 billion user mark in 2019, four years after its initial launch. Google Photos has seen strong user adoption. 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. Reviewers praised the updated Photos service for its recognition technology, search, apps, and loading times. Google Photos received critical acclaim after its decoupling from Google+ in 2015. Photos automatically suggested collections based on face, location, trip, or other distinction.

In May 2017, Google announced several updates to Google Photos, including reminders for and suggested sharing of photos, shared photo libraries between two users, and physical albums. The computer vision of Google Photos recognizes faces (not only those of humans, but pets as well), grouping similar ones together (this feature is only available in certain countries due to privacy laws) geographic landmarks (such as the Eiffel Tower) and subject matter, including birthdays, buildings, animals, food, and more.ĭifferent forms of machine learning in the Photos service allow recognition of photo contents, automatically generate albums, animate similar photos into quick videos, surface past memories at significant times, and improve the quality of photos and videos. Users can search for anything in photos, with the service returning results from three major categories: People, Places, and Things. The service automatically analyzes photos, identifying various visual features and subjects.
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The previous free tier, unlimited photos and videos up to 16 megapixels and 1080p resolution respectively (anything larger gets down-scaled to these sizes), ended on the same day. It was announced in May 2015 and spun off from Google+, the company's former social network.Īs of June 1, 2021, in its free tier, any newly uploaded photo and video counts towards the 15 GB free storage quota shared across the user's Google services, with the exception of current Pixel phones. Google Photos is a photo sharing and storage service developed by Google. Google will also be retiring some functions of the Picasa API such as Flash support, Community search, Mutation operations other than uploads and All support for tags, comments, and contacts starting from May 1st.6.09282 / October 13, 2022 3 days ago ( ) ĥ.22357 / September 19, 2020 2 years ago ( ) Ħ.11 / October 13, 2022 3 days ago ( )

You can easily import Picasa Albums to Google Photos when if you are planning to move to it. Google said that it will be creating a new place to access your old Picasa Web Albums data, if you don’t want to use Google Photos so that you can view, download, or delete your Picasa Web Albums, but you won’t be able to create, organize or edit albums. Google Photos is a new and smarter product, that offers a better platform for us to build amazing experiences and features for you in the future,” said Google. “We believe we can create a much better experience by focusing on one service that provides more functionality and works across mobile and desktop, rather than divide our efforts across two different products. The desktop application will still work, but it will not get any future updates. The desktop application will not be supported starting from Maand Picasa Web Albums, a companion service will be shut down on May 1, 2016. After 12 years, Google has decided to shut down its photo sharing service Picasa and focus entirely on Google Photos.
