So Google Photos truly seems like a hell of a service. So similar to the stellar Apple Photos, which just shouldn't be surprising at this point, in whatever direction the copying is going: clean design, lots of white-space, places and people and moments pre-organized, auto-backup, quick editing, available over every device...
But it's also got a few semi-Google-exclusive (for now) features. Combining all of them together and doing them very well makes Walt Mossberg, Apple fan boy, call it best-of-breed.
Unlimited storage isn't surprising considering the race to the bottom for storage pricing, and their huge data center advantage. I expect Apple will update their pricing tiers next week, though I'd be shocked if they went completely free. Everyone else will do it, and soon. It's inevitable.
The super powerful search and indexing isn't surprising either. Though they seemingly do a stellar job and everyone's super blown away by the features, the truth is that Facebook has been doing Facial Recognition for a long ass time. Flickr identifies beers and dogs and shit, too. Apple Photos also does Faces (and pretty well), though, yes, it doesn't have the history and power of machine learning to really handle everything else Google does. Can't argue with that. Google's just doing them all, and probably better.
I've got more thoughts on the endless Google vs Apple debate coming soon. Photos is just a small piece. Both companies are at a very real crucible moment, for very different reasons.
Honestly, I'm just glad photo organization and storage has become a billion fucking times better and easier in the past twelve months. We are all truly better off.
More to come, but I'll leave this here:
“(Google Photos) promises privacy and the app has no ads, (but) using it requires you to trust a company whose business model is tracking your actions and selling ads.”