Google Said to Be Close to Unveiling New Web Photo Service

[Tucky9]

Google Said to Be Close to Unveiling New Web Photo Service

Bloomberg - ‎May 19, 2015‎
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-19/google-said-to-be-close-to-unveiling-new-web-photo-service

and more reports, see here:
https://news.google.com/news/story?ncl=dbCQi7xHmYu89QMkEAmsbZ9Uf9R8M&q=bloomberg+google&lr=German&hl=en&sa=X&ei=iXpcVausNMSmygP99YGgDg&ved=0CEUQqgIwAw

[Lady GooGoo La La]

No surprises here, Google is flopping around like a newly caught fish. They dont have a clue but enjoy trying new ventures.  Why would anyone want to invest years of their own time in one of
these ill-fated impending disasters. Not me! I've been burned once..... not again.

One could look at it optimistically and think maybe Google recognize their mistake and want to create another site to accept the import of Panoramio photo's, one thing is clear tho, Panoramio is a dead end!

[Pierre M.]

We know nothing. And the A.I which manages Google does not communicate with us.
 a collaboration "user - manager"
 would be good

Pierre

[RoarX]

Here it is: http://googleblog.blogspot.no/2015/05/picture-this-fresh-approach-to-photos.html

I'm not sure what to think of this yet.

[Lady GooGoo La La]

Yawn....

Appears to have phony focus! Bluuuh!

[Draken]

Let's wait and see...

Will it be just a storage product or it will have some kind of interaction?

Perhaps at Google they think they have invented sliced bread!!

[RoarX]

More to read:
https://medium.com/backchannel/bradley-horowitz-says-that-google-photos-is-gmail-for-your-images-and-that-google-plus-is-not-dead-54be1d641526

[© Tom Cooper]

Supposed to be mobile & web, but of course all of the demo images are from a mobile device.

 

Ho-hum.

[Tucky9]

Here are already some reports about the features:
http://www.androidpolice.com/tags/photos/

See these posts:

 [Update: It's Live] I/O 2015 - New Google Photo App Launches Today, Includes Unlimited Free Storage Of High Quality Photos And Video
Jeff Beck
2015/05/28  1:11 pm
http://www.androidpolice.com/2015/05/28/io-2015-new-google-photo-app-launches-today-includes-unlimited-free-storage-of-high-quality-photos-and-video/

Google's New Photos App Will Get More Transparent Settings For Photo Backup
Rita El Khoury
May 27, 2015
http://www.androidpolice.com/2015/05/27/googles-new-photos-app-will-get-more-transparent-settings-for-photo-backup/

The New Google Photos App Will Automatically Group Your Images By Faces And Recognized Objects Like Cars, Skylines, And Food
Ryan Whitwam
May 25, 2015
http://www.androidpolice.com/2015/05/25/the-new-google-photos-app-will-automatically-group-your-images-by-faces-and-recognized-objects-like-cars-skylines-and-food/

In The New Google Photos App, Autoawesome Becomes 'Assistant,' And Allows For More Manual Creations
Liam Spradlin
May 24, 2015
http://www.androidpolice.com/2015/05/24/in-the-new-google-photos-app-autoawesome-becomes-assistant-and-allows-for-more-manual-creations/

The New Google Photos App Will Include Photo And Video Link Sharing With Privacy Controls
Ryan Whitwam
May 24, 2015
http://www.androidpolice.com/2015/05/24/the-new-google-photos-app-will-include-photo-and-video-link-sharing-with-privacy-controls/

[Tomas K☼h☼ut]

And here is the service:

https://photos.google.com/

More or less, it seems to be intended as a personal (private) backup tool for photos. No interaction (comments...) within the service, but there are some tool for sharing of the photos and their selections on G+, FB, Twitter or via a link. It looks like there is also a support for the automatic backup from the device (phone, computer).

The photos under 16 MB are stored uncompressed and the storage quota is unlimited. 

Looks pretty good. ;-)

[Pierre M.]

Hello Thomas
I don't understand !!!
There is a redundant effect in what makes google. Photos published in my new " Google photo " are the same which appeared in my "drive"!
These photos arise of G +.
While to think? The Drive is limited to 15 GB and " google photo " is unlimited.?

The teams of Google do not communicate between them?
It's a little bit confused......

Pierre

[hvbemmel]

Hi Pierre,

the drive is not (entirely) limited to 15 GB 

Items that count toward your storage limit

• Gmail: All the messages and attachments in your mail, including those in your Spam and Trash folders.
• Drive: Files you’ve stored in Drive, like PDFs, images, and videos. Anything you’ve made with Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides won’t count toward your storage limit.
• Google Photos: Only photos over 2048x2048 pixels and videos longer than 15 minutes count toward your storage limit.

If you exceed your storage limit, you'll receive warnings and you'll need to free up storage as soon as you can. Otherwise, you won’t be able to sync or upload additional items to your Drive or add photos to Google. After a period of time, incoming messages to your Gmail account will be returned to the sender and you won’t be able to send new messages.

Items that don't count toward your storage limit

• Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, Presentations, Drawings, etc.
• Files that others have shared with you

source: https://support.google.com/drive/answer/6558?hl=en

HTH

Herman

[Lady GooGoo La La]

From Google Privacy policy

When you upload, submit, store, send or receive content to or through our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content.

What does this mean?

[RoarX]

Herman, now you are mixing Google+ photos with Google photos :P

Google photos offers the following: "With Google Photos, you can now backup and store unlimited, high-quality photos and videos, for free. We maintain the original resolution up to 16MP for photos, and 1080p high-definition for videos, and store compressed versions of the photos and videos in beautiful, print-quality resolution."

More details here: https://support.google.com/photos/answer/6220791?p=storage&rd=1

2048 x 2048 is only 4 MP.

[RoarX]

It means that Google owns our stuff...

"Don't be evil", yea right...

[Pierre M.]

ahh ok
I must clean my glasses XD.

But If I understand well : now Drive and Google Photos. Why the two  at the same time ?

Thks Herman

Pierre

Le vendredi 29 mai 2015 18:12:16 UTC+2, hvbemmel a écrit : ok

[Daniela Brocca]

The photos I see I have in Picasa and some in Google +.

[RoarX]

I recommend everyone using Google Photos to check the settings page. There you can choose between free storage and limited storage as described here: https://support.google.com/photos/answer/6220791?p=storage&rd=1

In my settings it was set to "original" (limited storage). This is despite having the setting in Google+ photos set to free storage. If people are not aware of this they may spend all their "Google Drive" space without knowing about it.

[Tucky9]

On Friday, May 29, 2015 at 8:45:44 PM UTC+2, Pierre M. wrote:

ahh ok
I must clean my glasses XD.

But If I understand well : now Drive and Google Photos. Why the two  at the same time ?  ...

 

Pierre,
this answer does not even know Bradley Horowitz (Head of Google's Photos and Streams products) or one of his team.

My tests:

Photos I uploaded to Google Photo, I found in Google Photo and in Picasaweb. Why twice URL's?

Photos I uploaded from Picasa3 (pc desktop) to Picasaweb, I found in Picasaweb and in Google Photo. Why twice URL's?

Photos I uploaded to Panoramio Forum (the screenshots in the thread "red area" ), I found in Google Photo and in Picasaweb. Why 3 different URL's?
And in Picasaweb some images are also saved even twice or even multiple!

But photos I uploaded in the Panoramio Gallery were not in Google Photo and not in Picasaweb. Why not?

Photos I have deleted in Picasaweb were then also deleted in Google Photo and vice versa.

[hvbemmel]

Roar, the link I gave is about drive. the limit counts over all Google products

from the link I gave:

You have 15 GB of free storage to share across Google Drive, Gmail, and Google Photos. If you use Google Apps at work or school, you have at least 30 GB of storage. While you may have a lot of files and folders in your Google Drive, only items that you've synced or uploaded use storage space. Google Docs, Sheets, or Slides or items shared with you don’t count toward your storage space.

I add a part I already pasted so it´s complete in this post:

Items that count toward your storage limit

• Gmail: All the messages and attachments in your mail, including those in your Spam and Trash folders.

• Drive: Files you’ve stored in Drive, like PDFs, images, and videos. Anything you’ve made with Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides won’t count toward your storage limit.

• Google Photos: Only photos over 2048x2048 pixels and videos longer than 15 minutes count toward your storage limit.

I can imagine they upped the size to 4000*4000 as this will be constantly a growing number as long as camera resolution grows (on top now: Canon 5DS with a Sony 50MP chip) . 

 I quote you  :P

cheers

[hvbemmel]

Hi Lady,

basically it means you grant Google the right to use your photo in their products like the searchmachine etc., etc. This legally makes it impossible for idiots to complain that they find their photo in GM, GE or that their photo in Google is square instead of rectangular, that sort of things.

The hard part is that we have to trust Google that it stops there. These kind of Terms you also can find in the Google TOS and in the Panoramio TOS (When you post a photo in Panoramio, you grant Google the right to use it as follows: Host it, Display it, Make the photo available from the APIs )

.  

[Pierre M.]

Hello Tucky !

Thus, it is good of what I thought... Redundancy!!!! Which loss; whole servers who serve in only to preserve copies.

Google has money to lose? (google's beholder will hate me...)

AND at the level ecology? It is necessary to maintain these servers at the cool...(lot of energy loss)  Not very ecological unless installing them in Laponie ???

Pierre

[hvbemmel]

http://www.google.com/about/datacenters/inside/locations/index.html

There´s one in the Netherlands I know. Google is building a completely new one near the existing one now. Cooling is provided by the cool Dutch air (sea climate), close to the sea also using the rather cool sea water in that part of Northern Holland: http://www.google.com/about/datacenters/inside/locations/eemshaven/  

The new Dutch data centre will benefit from the latest designs in cooling and electrical technology. It will be free-cooled - taking advantage of natural assets like cool air and grey water to keep our servers cool. Our data centers use 50% less energy than a typical datacenter - and our intention is to run this new facility on renewable energy.

[c0l0gne1-Views, no thanks!]

In this review they don't seem to be overly enthusiastic: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2484832,00.asp

[davidcmc58]

Google has established so many photo sharing sites such as Panoramio, Picasa Web Album, Google+, Views and now Google Photos ( & God knows what's next ) over the years. There is got to be something wrong with these people. Are they capable of making up their minds?  The competitors are all very straight forward and focused. Apple has their iphoto / icloud, Yahoo has Flickr and Facebook is simply FB all the way. How many of you have the energy and desire to follow these ever-changing "Google awesomeness"? Not me for sure!

[Draken]

Don't be so unfair!  Google's inconsistency is very consistent!

[Tucky9]

Google Photo is not the great leap forwards as was expected, rather only a further leap into insignificance in the future. Google Photo is another backup for photos in the cloud and a simple photo sharing tool for smartphone photo junkies, but probably less suitable for serious photo enthusiasts.

With so many different photo applications the photographers (and also the Google employees) lose the overview. Which service is suitable? How long will the service exist? So, no user can trust Google, it lacks the clarity and constancy.

[Lady GooGoo La La]

I wonder if Google want to compete with companies like Ghetty images, providing our images for free to commercial sites in exchange for advertising exposure!

[Lady GooGoo La La]

Create derivative works and modify is very unclear.... Google is no longer the company it once was, I wouldnt trust them, especially if using their service requires any user input or time. Google will not maintain all of these photo sites, they will merge and change the rules. 

Dont invest any time that you're not prepared to loose.


LaLaLa

[hvbemmel]

Yes I agreed already with that. We can not trust Google to use our work in our interest.

BTW Hosting our photos already means modifying it. At the moment you upload to Panoramio your photos are being modified in several formats large, medium, small, thumbnail, square, etc. . Using it in advertisements (GE, GM) can be considered as a derivate. 

So, again, the thought behind it is pure, but alas, Google has proven it can not be trusted

So what´s the use of putting photos in the cloud when Google can announce tomorrow that Google Drive will be deprecated and stop next year. Google Drive has been build on the quicksand of the Google company. When I have to keep my copies on my hard drives, which of course I will keep doing, why should I keep my data on Google Drive or Google photos. So this will be only for some selected files or photos I want to share or access anywhere in the world. And even the last can be done with a USB flashdrive. Of course it can get in handy when I store my data from my cellphone temporarily to make space (and deplete my battery) until I´m on a real computer, but that´s all. It seems to be impossible for Google to convey the thought behind their products any more. Human communication is apparently gone, they all talk bleep, bleep, bleep now. 

On Sunday, 31 May 2015 05:32:21 UTC+2, Lady GooGoo La La wrote:

Create derivative works and modify is very unclear.... Google is no longer the company it once was, I wouldnt trust them, especially if using their service requires any user input or time. Google will not maintain all of these photo sites, they will merge and change the rules. 

Dont invest any time you are prepared to loose, investing with Google.

[Tomas K☼h☼ut]

Well, I spent couple of minutes by testing new "Photos" service on desktop PC. Here are my impressions: 

Presentation on Photos is better than in G+ - you can zoom to maximum detail of photo, photo is displayed in full screen without any distracting content (like title, exif info etc.). Overlay icons with menus disappear after some delay when photo is exposed in single photo view (well, on slower PCs this timing may be problematic). However, automatic slide show is not present, but still you can use cursor arrows to flip through photos.

In some extent I like "automatic" tagging used for search. 

Some (invisible) tags on your photo (which are used for search) are probably derived from photo title/description (if there are any in Exif) and location (again - if Geo location is within EXIF data). Some other tags are "magically guessed" from photo content. In fact, it's most exciting feature of this service! Of course, these guesses made with aid of "artificial intelligence" are sometimes affected by "natural stupidity". ;-)

So the beach with a white sand is searched by the keyword "snow".

Keyword "dog" gave me photo of sheep herd and pair of horses. 

Good new is that keyword search is by it's nature multilingual. So I have same result for "dog", dogs", "hund", "hunde", "chien", "cani", "psi"... but declination (singular/plural form) of searched word in some languages causes troubles - so I have no result for "cane" (singular for "cani") and "pes" (singular for "psi"). Well, there are more sheep and horses on these photos. ;-)

On the other hand - I can find this photo of sheep herd also by keyword "sheep" and photo of horses by keyword "horse".

But anyway, only way how to organize your photos for you are albums. No user definable tags (something I am missing here).

[QuentinUK]

 

❝Store files up to 5 TB each. Anything you create with Docs, Sheets or Slides won’t use up any of your storage.

Google Drive allows an unlimited number of 5TB docs for free.

So if you are concerned about archiving photos just run then through a binary to text convertor (eg uuencode) and store them as text files.

Also can it be assumed that the 2048 by 2048 limit for Google Drive has been increased? That would be assuming that Google is organised and there is consistency across the product line.

Also 2048 by 2048 is 4 megapixels but is only for square photos. For 4:3 photos, which is what most people upload, the longest edge is 2048 pixels, so the maximum size is 3 megapixels.

There is a big jump from 3megapixels to 16megapixels.

Has anyone checked whether Google+ photos are still being shrunk to 2048 by 2048.

[hvbemmel]

Has anyone checked whether Google+ photos are still being shrunk to 2048 by 2048.

When you go to your photos in G+ you will be redirected to Google photos. There is a link back to the old G+ layout though. The storage limits are met by all product together though, except Panoramio . As Panoramio will go on as standalone product I don´t know if there will be any changes in the future for new photos. 

[RoarX]

Here is a blogpost explaining a lot about Google Photos:

http://turbulenttechtalk.blogspot.no/2015/06/google-photos-feature-spotlight-missing.html

[RoarX]

And here is another one for those who may be interested: https://plus.google.com/+AmirudinRidwan/posts/6cQjHFipSuZ