Google Photos

Camera makers are pushing DLSRs, mirrorless ILCs, or even point-and-shoot cameras as the next step after graduating from smartphone cameras. But what they offer in power and quality, they often lose in convenience, especially in posting to social media or even transferring photos to the cloud. To their credit, they are doing their best to make those activities easier and Canon and Google have just made the ultimate next step in making Google Photos backups as painless and as seamless as possible.

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Although often seen as a form of narcissism, selfies, just like the normal photos that we take, are the way this age celebrates and preserves memories. The growing capabilities of smartphones allow us to take photos by the dozens even hundreds, making it hard to organize and search for photos take just months ago. Google says it created Google Photos (and related cloud and AI features) just for that and now it's giving the app a refresh to put your memories front and center.

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There has been a renaissance of interest in printed photos, partly thanks to the popularity of Instagram's square format and the return of instant-print "Polaroid" cameras. The latter, of course, means you'll have to carry another camera or at least buy a small pocket printer whose only use is to print such framed photos. If that sounds like more a hassle, Google thought so, too. It also thought it could make a small business out of printing photos for you but it turned out not to be that hot after all.

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I expected the Facebook photo transfer tool to be a grudging concession and tricky to use, but it's actually one of the easiest new Facebook features I can remember trying. Announced late last year, but only now available worldwide, it's a topical addition given a resurgence of questions about the ethics of one social network having so much power in our daily lives and around our electoral system.

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Facebook's photo transfer tool, which allows easy exports of any media uploaded to the social network, has rolled out globally the company has confirmed today. Announced back at the tail-end of 2019, the tool launched initially in Ireland as a way for Facebook users to move all of the photos and videos they've added to their profile to Google Photos, without having to download the archive first.

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Google has announced a change to its Google Photos app that gives users more control over shared albums and who can access them. The company says this new feature builds upon the direct sharing feature Google introduced back in December for individual videos and images. Similar functionality is being added for shared albums, though the old sharing method isn't going anywhere.

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Following its initial announcement of the offering late last year, Facebook has announced the North American release of its new tool that enables its users to transfer their uploaded images to Google Photos. The company initially made the tool available to a limited number of users in Ireland but announced on Thursday that it is once again expanding it to all of its users in the United States and Canada.

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Today we were graced with the gift of a gallery that magically updates whenever a new smart device is released. This gallery seemed to be giving us every wallpaper from every major smartphone over the past several years. It was made by a stick figure man by the name of Umeda Ishan, and at first it seemed pretty great, in a web browser, on a desktop machine. But once we get to the mobile app, everything went wrong.

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Google Photos, like many storage services, offers a data export tool that allows users to download all of the photos and videos they have stored on Google's servers. Officially called Google Takeout, Google has started notifying users about a security flaw that was present in the export tool late last year. It's a big one too, as it included videos belonging to other users in some export archives.

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All but the most invested Google users will probably remember that it does more than just search the Web or manage your emails. Although not as famous or notorious as the nearly defunct Flickr, Google Photos has become one of the quickest ways to fill up your Google Drive and pay for expanded storage. Now the company is looking into another possible revenue source that will leverage its photography AI prowess and the fact that it already has your photos anyway.

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There are numerous apps in the Android ecosystem that present users with a view of their photos, including those from manufacturers such as Samsung and Huawei. Many, however, prefer the "pure" experience that Google's apps deliver, even if they're sometimes lacking in features. One such feature seems to be coming to Google Photos really soon and, even if small, could give Android users one less reason to use other gallery apps. Which, of course, means more users for Google's cloud-centric service.

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It's about to get a whole lot easier to share photos and videos stored in Google Photos. Starting today and rolling out over the next several days is a new Google Photos update that brings support for private messaging. Users are no longer required to download content and share it with contacts using a different app, nor do they have to continue creating and sharing albums that feature only one or two pieces of content.

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