The team of people at Google + is about to grow, as Google has just acquired Odysee, a company that specializes in photo backup and sharing with a focus on privacy. First and foremost what this means for existing users of the Odysee app and service which was already available via Android and the iOS platform, is that they’ll have continued access up until a certain point, which happens to be February 23rd. After that time the service will be shut down and no longer be usable, but users will still be able to access their photos and videos through a downloadable archive so not all will be lost. To this end, if you didn’t already have the app installed, you won’t get the chance to try it as it has already been removed from the Play Store.
Google has been adding some interesting features to Google + in the photos department from the beginning of Google+, and it already has a pretty nice little setup for storing pictures in the cloud and giving users access to them anywhere they’re signed into their Google account. There’s even some fun auto enhancements and story like video mashups that will pop up in your photos from time to time. It’s clear that Google wants more for their Google + photos offerings though and this acquisition of Odysee will allow them to strengthen the photo portion of the social network to enhance the experience they already have up and running, while also possibly creating a new and separate photo experience to users.
What Google may have planned for the addition of Odysee to the Google team is not entirely clear, as they could integrate the features of Odysee into the already existing Google + app to improve the photos section, but they could also use the Odysee team to launch a separate photos applications that comes with the familiarity we already know of the past Google + Photos efforts with the usefulness of Odysee, like the offline backup features allowing users to store photos and videos on their desktops or laptops rather than in the cloud, and the ability to set up an automatic, private, sharing network with specific people so they can see the photos and videos that people allow, as opposed to sharing them widely with everyone.