Google Photos is the Greatest


Originally published June 8, 2015 on The Elizabethian
The following is a transcript of a Facebook conversation between David Pogge, writer for erbmagazine.com, and I:
Joshua Dudley:
Have you looked at google photos yet? it is what everyone has always wanted
I honestly don’t even know what that is.
Joshua Dudley
1)unlimited photo and video storage (ie i just put tango and cash on there)
2) super easy to use interface
I think I’ve entered a wormhole.
Joshua Dudley
3) automatically adds any photos or videos you shoot with your iphone or android
4) sorts by metadata so you can you search by places or faces
5) free
6) only shrinks things very slightly and online reviews say its near impossible to tell unless you blow it up and look closely
7) create photo albums of course
8) it also creates something like a scrapbook. pictures and videos that appear in different spots on the app to catch your eye and you can add captions
9) works exactly the same on your pc and looks the same
10) also on your pc its only a webpage not a download
Are you their sales rep?
Joshua Dudley
11) i want to be
12) you should be. I’m sold.
Joshua Dudley
12) ive been trying to extol flickr for years but its clunky and they missed a huge advantage
The only thing Google can’t do right is social media.
Joshua Dudley
13) yes . also so far there are no ads
Everything else, they’re practically Midas.
Joshua Dudley
14) can you believe i put tango and cash on there and played it and it worked?
Wait, what…?
Joshua Dudley
15) yes. thought you missed that part. not only your personal videos but any videos you may have downloaded of any sort
16) i read one article where a guy is already using it in place of his iphone photos app
17) okay if i use this verbatim for a review of it tomorrow?
Absolutely.
Joshua Dudley
18) very soon people will wonder how they lived without it. Everyone including me will be going through their old hard drives to put their old photos on there automatically indexed by date.


Google Photos came out a few days ago, and in the first day or two, I was reading as many reviews as possible to find out what people thought. Many reviews seem to get hung up on the fact that your files will get slightly compressed in exchange for unlimited storage. However, subsequent testing has proven that this change is nearly imperceptible, and the photos are fine for printing. For people shooting photos with SLR cameras, you’ll want to stick with Flickr. But really, how many of us are shooting SLR photos or printing pictures?
Of course, there is also the crowd that wastes our time by writing more articles about privacy concerns in relation to Google and other technology things of its ilk. People who continue to have concerns about privacy over the Internet should basically move to a cabin in Alaska and become an ice fisherman, because like it or not, you’re never going to fully escape tracking unless you disconnect from the Internet and use only cash.
Also, there are some “fun” features that Google Photos has, like creating a “movie” out of several of your photos and selecting the background music from numerous generic songs. The effect is hilarious and slightly early 90’s in a charming sort of way.
As hinted in this article’s title, Google Photos is pretty much the greatest thing ever, and if I had my way, everyone would know about it. However, and this is a small caveat, I can see some areas of improvement that will undoubtedly be corrected soon enough. I have not read any articles that offered the completely useless and expert analysis that you are about to get, so this “information” is completely unique and wayyyy different from the 37,000 other articles about Google Photos.
1) Sharing a photo from my phone to Facebook works but also adds some weird computer script garble.
2) Google Plus, Facebook, and Twitter are the only social media options for sharing available.
3) You can create albums which act like desktop PC folders to store photos and videos in, but you cannot create an album within an album. Nor can you share or allow others access to your albums. If Google Photos did this, they could completely annihilate Dropbox as a competitor in that space, as these are the main reasons people use Dropbox along with its ease of use and ubiquitousness.
4) You can search photos by face, but you cannot add a face to tell Google Photos to search. You have to wait for it to add to its lists of faces. As a matter of fact, you can’t edit this list of faces in any way. That would be a nice feature, unless you actually wanted that guy you hated from ten years ago to pop up right next to your mom, even though he’s only in 3 out of 5,000 photos.
5) In the previously mentioned “movies” you can create from photos, you cannot add music from your library or other sources. Probably not too many people will make and share these “movies”, but for the few who do, they will probably say “Hey, why can’t I add my own music? What are these, like, 80’s or early 90’s cell phones?”
6) Google Photos is not available for Windows Phone, which would be a huge problem, except that I’m not sure the Windows Phone actually exists. It’s the unicorn of phones. Do you know anyone that owns one?
Google Photos is available as a free app for iOS and Android and is an awesome website on a computer. Happy photo adding!

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