3 Handy Features of the New Google Photos

— -- Google's new photo service, Google Photos, offers solutions in one place to people with an unmanageable collection of photos, especially on their mobile devices. Best of all, the storage is unlimited and free.

Introduced Thursday at Google I/O 2015, Google Photos is available on Android and Apple devices as an app, plus in a desktop version. Unlike Google's previous photo service that was bundled with Google+, you don't need an account with the company's social network to share and edit photos.

Tech columnist Walt Mossberg of Re/Code says Google Photos is not perfect, though after one week of testing he found it "better than the leading competitors from Apple, Amazon, Dropbox and Microsoft."

Here are three features that can be particularly helpful:

1. Search your photos

Google says it uses an algorithm that makes searching for photos easier with artificial intelligence and machine learning. Your photos can be automatically backed up from your device in high quality (for the average person): up to 16 megapixel images and 1080p videos.

Even if your photos don't have captions or descriptions, just type in a word like "dog" or "graduation" and Google Photos will instantly show auto-grouped images, which are private. This is where Mossberg points out some errors of the new product, such as pulling a photo of the Apple logo under the category of "Sky."

2. Organization

The new product auto-groups images under people, places and things. 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, such as your niece, from infant to teen -- all privately and without attached names.

3. Photos Assistant

Too busy to share your vacation photos from Hawaii, or videos of your growing puppy? The new product allows you to easily or automatically create ways to share your photos, such as montage movies, collages and animations, or GIFs.