Google Photos Offers Free Unlimited Photo Storage For iOS, Android And Web

One of the highlights from the Google I/O developers conference was Google Photos. Google Photos has free unlimited storage and also has many photo editing tricks. 

By offering free unlimited photo storage, Google Photos undercuts the Apple Photos storage service. Apple gives iCloud users 5GB for free, but it has monthly costs of $0.99 for 20GB, $3.99 for 200GB, $9.99 for 500GB and $19.99 for 1TB. If photos uploaded to Google Photos are over 16-megapixels, they will be compressed down to 16-megapixel resolution. Fortunately, Google lets you store full 1080p videos for free. If you upload a 4K video to Google Photos, then it will be compressed. Storing the original files will consume some of your Google Drive storage. Google Drive offers 15GB storage for free, but you can upgrade to 100GB for $1.99 per month, 1TB for $9.99 per month, 10TB for $99.99 per month, 20TB for $199.99 per month or 30TB for $299.99 per month. You can decide whether you want to store the original files or compressed versions when you launch the Google Photos app.

What makes Google Photos even more appealing is its smart search engine. After uploading your photos to Google Photos, then you will be able to search for them using keywords like “Seattle” or “kitten.” All of your photos are automatically sorted by date, people, places and things. The Google Photos app also has tools to enhance photos like color and lighting enhancements. 

To share multiple photos at once from the Google Photos mobile app, you simply have to press and hold on a photo to select it and then drag your fingers across other photos. After the photos are highlighted, you will see a link to share the photos through e-mail, text message, Facebook, Twitter , Google+, etc. There is an option to share your photos privately as well.

There is an Assistant feature that helps you create animated GIFs, collages and highlights videos. Photos that are taken in batches will be turned into an animated GIF. When the Assistant feature in Google Photos creates an animated GIF, it sends a notification to your device.

You will be able to upload the photos from your smartphone or tablet using the app or Mac and PC uploader tools that are available at http://photos.google.com. And you can download the Google Photos app on iTunes and Google Play now.

Personally, I am excited about Google Photos. I have over 100GB of photos stored on an external hard drive and have been looking for an inexpensive way to back them up in the cloud just in case. I plan to upload all of those photos to Google Photos very soon.

What are your thoughts about Google Photos? Let me know in the comments section!