Google is still working on its year-old Google Photos – just updated in March, it now allows it you to group photos automatically together by vacation, outing, or location as well as improving upon its editing capabilities. Speaking like a proud parent, Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced at Google I/O today that in that short year, they now have over 200 million active users each month. The users have created more than 2 trillion labels for sorting its Google Images, and 24 billion of these are selfies. Pichai said, “Google Photos shows what’s possible when you approach an existing area from a new perspective.”
Google Photos is a database to store, backup, and archive photos and videos in the cloud. It offers unlimited storage as long as you keep your images to what Google terms “high quality,” which means the image will be reduced to 16MP if it is greater. Unlimited videos that are 1080p or lower can also be stored. If you want to save photos or videos in the original resolution, you must opt for using your storage space on Google Drive.
Google Photos does so much more than simply store photos and videos. It maintains a comprehensive database where you can search via your device. Of course, the photos are organized by date, but if you tap on the search icon, you will see a search area where Google Photos has automatically cataloged your photos by various categories, such as people, objects, and places. By ‘people,’ you say? Yes, the search engine is capable of creating a computer model of a face and tagging that person into his or her own group. This tagging makes it easy to find pictures of a particular person without having to go through every picture you saved. In the same line of thinking, you can also ‘hide a face’ of someone you may not want see – possibly an ex boyfriend, girlfriend or spouse.
Google Photos can also scan your device to see if you are running out of room on your hard-drive. Anything you have uploaded to the cloud storage can be deleted to make more space. If you accidentally delete a photo or video you need – no problem – Google Photos will keep the deleted photo for 60-days before it is permanently removed. Because the uploading side is independent of the application, you do not even need the application on your device to upload photos to the cloud.