Thanks to Google, you no longer have to pay to store your photos and videos online. Google Photos is the new platform that allows you to store, organize and share unlimited images and videos, free of charge.
Anil Sabharwal, director of product management for Google, introduced the new service at the Google I/O developer conference in San Francisco on Thursday to huge applause.
Google Photos has a host of useful features, but the big one is the unlimited storage of photos up to 16 megapixels and 1080p HD video.
"Google Photos is a home for all your pictures that are organized and brought to life so that you can share and save what matters," said Sabharwal.
As with former incarnations, Google Photos stores all your pictures from all your different devices in one place. The app is available starting May 28 on Android, iOS and Web. It has a number of new features that allow you to organize and easily find photos.
Pictures are automatically organized by people, places and things, without any manual tagging. Clicking on the face of a person in a picture will allow you to see all your pictures of this person in one folder. Using the pinch-zoom gesture, you can decide whether to view these pictures over days, months or years. Sabharwal demoed the feature by displaying pictures of his niece right back to the day she was born. Similar grouping is also available by location or a particular interest.
Google Photos also makes it easier to share your images. As with other platforms, you can easily share across Facebook, Twitter and other social media, but there's also a new "get a link" button. This allows you to share photos with a friend using a unique URL without having to worry about whether that person uses a particular app. Your friend can then see the photos even if he doesn't have Google Photos, but if he does, with one click, he can save those photos to his own collections.
The app also allows for easy editing, and for those without the time, the app will automatically suggest image and video montages based on saved images. However, it's the free storage that will make the headlines.
Flickr created a big splash by offering users 1 TB of free storage last year, but Google has just upped the ante with its unlimited offer.
