Google Photos

Most people never delete any photos from their phone. Ever. I’ve never been able to understand that: how do these people hope to find anything good in that dump later? Google’s Bradley Horowitz doesn’t exaggerate when he says:
“You almost need a second vacation to go through the pictures of the safari on your first vacation.”

Enter Google Photos. It just got launched and the reviews sound great. Remember when Gmail was launched, it caused a wave because it offered 1 GB of storage at a time when the other mail services offered a few megabytes! Déjà vu: Google Photos offers unlimited photo and video storage.

The other reason Gmail was a game changer was because of what Google is synonymous with: search. Gmail let you search through your mails effortlessly. Google Photos claims to do something similar, with photos! Mario Aguilar is blown over:
“It’s crazy how well this works. Creepy even…where Photos really wrecks your brain is when you start searching for random things in your collection. Beers? It finds photos of beers. Bars? It finds photos of bars. Ugh, I am going to regret this, but type in selfies, and it finds selfies!”

So what’s the catch? Sean Hollister lists a few:
“It’s hard to ignore that Google is in the business of turning gigantic data streams into personalized advertising and services…And at some point, Google might have enough of your photos and videos that it won’t be easy to opt-out…(At a later date, if you don’t like their revised privacy policy) you’ll need to go buy two hard drives and download a giant collection of photos and videos that—again—you’ve never bothered to sort, categorize or tag.”

I’m guessing most people will do what Hollister ends with:
“I’m hooked, and there’s no turning back. This tech is here to stay…whether you eventually pick Google, Yahoo, Amazon, or some other company which upgrades its service to match.”

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