Google Photos, a widely popular digital album, has recently reached a significant milestone as it surpasses the 500 million user mark. Celebrating this remarkable feat, Google is debuting new features including Photo Books, Suggested Sharing, and Shared Libraries, delivering a more personalized and intuitive photo sharing experience.
Coupling creativity with technology, Photo Books provides users with the ability to create their own mini photo journals in digital format, which can be easily shared with others. The feature includes unique customizations like adding a cover for the Photo Book to give readers a sneak peek of what to expect. For instance, a Photo Book titled “Our Football Journey” could house cherished images of Junior’s football matches, which can then be shared with Aunt Bisi in London. With Google’s advanced machine learning, it scans and suggests the best pictures for your intended Photo Book, reducing hours of manual sorting to mere minutes.
In terms of pricing, a 20-page softcover book is priced at $9.99, whereas a hardcover variant is available at $19.99. These options are currently available to users within the US on all platforms – web, iOS and Android. Plans for extending this feature to other countries are yet to be announced.
With Suggested Sharing, Google’s intelligence goes a notch higher. This feature notifies a user when it observes that an image may be relevant for sharing with others. The app will automatically draw upon its machine learning to select these images, leaving the user only to tap the send button. For instance, if you capture a memorable moment at an event with friends, Google might advise you to share the photo with the friend present in the image.
Last, but certainly not least, is the Shared Libraries feature. With Google Photos, you can now automatically share your images with your closed ones without manually choosing each photo. You can set the app to share all your photos or just a specific set based on the person or date. That means you no longer need to remind your partner to send vacation photos because Google Photos will do it for you.
In other news, Google announced yesterday that their storage platform, Google Drive, has surpassed an equally significant milestone, now boasting an active user base of over 800 million people a month.