Google Photos: 3 Big Reasons Why It's a Hit

Months after it launched, Google's photo management app hits a milestone.

By
ALYSSA NEWCOMB
October 21, 2015, 10:08 AM ET
2 min read

— -- Google Photos is a big hit.

More than 100 million people have signed up for the unlimited photo storage service since it was spun off from Google+ five months ago. Available on Android and Apple devices as an app, plus in a desktop version, Google Photos helps users store and easily manage their collection of photos, essentially tidying up what would otherwise be an unwieldy collection of images.

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Storage

One of the most welcome features of Google Photos is all of the space the auto-upload feature clears up on a smartphone. Google says the auto-upload feature of the service has freed up 3,720 terabytes of storage on users' smartphones. For some perspective, that's like filling up a 16 GB smartphone with photos every day for 637 years.

Search

This is where the magic happens. Using algorithm that gets smarter thanks to machine learning, users can search for words in their photos like "dog" or "graduation." Even if they don't have descriptions, Google Photos will instantly show auto-grouped images, making it easier to find the photo you want to see. Similar to the way Facebook and other photo programs can recognize a person's face, Google's product can even recognize the age progression of the same person.

The most searched for photo subject according to Google: Babies. Awww.

Sharing

A photo assistant capability lets users quickly create ways to share photos, whether through a montage movie, animation or a collage, making sharing those event photos friends have been bugging you for a simple and quick task.