Please Don’t Dump All Your Images in Google Photos
The new Google Photos app offers unlimited online storage for images and videos. It also boasts rich features like automatic organization and intelligent search. And to make it more popular, Google has announced to shut down Google+ Photos and embrace the new stand-alone Photos app. But still, we recommend you to not use Google Photos to dump all your images and videos for the time being. Here are our thoughts:
#1. Google Photos is a still half-baked product
The new Photos app is slick and convenient but only half as good as its predecessor:
- You cannot organize images into albums and folders. Neither sorting nor re-ordering is supported.
- You cannot edit pictures online like you used to in Google+.
- It does not support Chromecast yet.
- No clarity on photospheres and auto-enhance feature. Your existing comments may or may not be carried forward.
- You cannot tag people in the new app.
- Offline access is dubious.
#2. Are we sure about its future?
Google has mercilessly shut down tens’s of its products and services. Google+ photos is being discontinued which was previously thought as an integral part of Google+. Users who have paid for additional space for storing images now feel betrayed. If Google can shut earning products, what guarantee do we have for Photos app. More ever Picasa serves same purpose, so is Picasa going to get shut next?
#3. There are better apps to manage your pictures
Unlimited storage is the only good selling point for Google Photos. However, there are other (reliable) services which offer practical amount of storage space for free. Dropbox offers 2 GB free storage and their Carousel app is worth a try. OneDrive is another strong contender while Flickr is dedicated for photo enthusiast with 1000 GB of free space.
All good it may sound, but it’s a wise choice to wait for now. Please don’t dump all your images and videos (for now).
Related: Delete Images from Google+ Photos
Google seems to have remembered Picasa Web and they’re evening starting to push it for Hangouts photos and reminding people that’s where their Blogger photos are. Maybe we’ll see a merger of Photos and Picasa Web? I still prefer Picasa Web over Photos, but some things are broken (face tagging is totally broken, I would like if I could face tag for my own use rather than anything social) and some things need to be improved (like organizing photos – they should take a look at Flickr’s Organizr and pretty much just copy that).
Now for what Google is pushing Picasa?
They ought to have single application for managing all images.