Google Photos Hits 1 Billion Users
- Paul Thurrott
- Jul 25, 2019
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Google Photos has quickly rocketed to the one billion user milestone, about four years after it was spun out of Google+.
It’s in good company: 8 other Google products—Search, Android, Chrome, Gmail, Google Drive, Google Maps, Google Play Store, and YouTube have all hit or exceeded that same milestone. And on Android, which now boasts 2.5 billion users, three apps—Maps, YouTube, and the Google app—have been downloaded over 5 billion times.
Fast Company has a nice overview of how Google Photos was built and why it is so successful. But the key here, I think, is that Google simply built a better version of something that customers were already doing. And users have flocked to the app as a result.
A big part of being better is offering free storage to all users. And while photos for non-Pixel owners can be “compressed,” most smartphones take lower-quality photos than Google’s compression bar anyway. For most, this is simply free storage.
And the service itself is excellent, too. Aside from offering automatic backup from smartphones, it provides regular AI-based treats to its users in the form of automatically-generated stylized photos, “Then & Now” shots that compare people in a recent photo to a photo of the same people together in the past, photo slideshow movies of recent events, and “rediscover this day” prompts that surface favorite events from the past.
Put simply, if there’s a service that deserves to have one billion users, it’s Google Photos.
Conversation 28 comments
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dontbe evil
<p>Maybe because it's preinstalled in all android devices and all of them must have a google account… Oh wait, sorry this is not a ms article</p>
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dontbe evil
<blockquote><em><a href="#445008">In reply to amigokin:</a></em></blockquote><p>g+ was preinstalled but you don't need to use a social network… google photos is preinstalled and most of people don't look for other solution for backup gallery ecc</p>
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dontbe evil
<blockquote><em><a href="#444886">In reply to Minke:</a></em></blockquote><p>you mean like onedrive did since 2010?</p><p><br></p><p>p.s.</p><p>If I'm not mistaken, "Pixel unlimited storage in Google Photos at full resolution." is not offered anymore</p>
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Stooks
<p>1 Billion fools that gave their photos to Google……permanently. Watch the new show on Netflix "The Great Hack" it just came out.</p>
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faustxd9
Premium Member<p>Not sure if this falls within the scope of expertise of the team, but I would love for someone to analyze the EULA on Google Photos to extrapolate what we are giving up on privacy to use the service. In other words, does it use the photos internally for testing or training the machine learning / artificial intelligence, does it compare my photos with other Google images/results, etc. Very hesitant to use a product (outside of Android) to do a lot while my data is "the product" a company is making money on before I figure that out. It might make for a compelling series of articles based on the different services.</p>
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m_p_w_84
<p>I enjoy using Google Photo's. </p><p><br></p><p>But these numbers are always a bit nebulous in my opinion; however that Fast Company article you linked states the stat as more specifically a '<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">billion monthly users' – which is even more impressive.</span></p><p><br></p><p>Given how much I personally enjoy using it I am pleased to hear it is doing well, because Google has a terrible record of just killing products.</p>