Why Google Photos Is My Favourite Google Product

I hustle around a lot of smartphones every month, as it is a part of my job to test new phones and gizmos. One thing that really irks me while doing so is to copy the content from the old phone to the new phone. Though some phones offer a custom tool to copy data from one phone to another, some things have to be moved manually, which consumes time and other resources and Google Photos is the one tool that makes my life easy.

Most of the smartphones that I test comes with Google's suite of apps, which includes Gmail, YouTube, Chrome, Google Photos, and more. Lately, Google Photos have been my favorite app or service from Google and here are the reasons for the same.

Free to use

The Google Photos is completely free to use (as of now), where users can unlimited photos to the Google Photos for free. If the image size is less than 16 MP, then the image will be compressed with 16 MP. If you want to preserve the original resolution, Google offers up to 115 GB of storage for free and one has to buy the additional storage if one exceeds the 115 GB limit.

There is also an option called Express backup mode, which uploads photos in 3 MP mode, which uses less internet, which will be useful for those, who have a low-speed internet connection.

Cross-platform compatible

What makes Google Photos a truly genius photo backup tool is the fact that the service is cross-platform compatible. One can either use an Android or iOS smartphone to upload photos for free. Similarly, one can also access and upload photos using a standard web browser as well.

Easy to share with family and friends

Sharing photos and videos stored on Google Photos is easy as well. Just select the photos and videos that you are interested in sharing, click on share logo, select any third party app (WhatsApp, Telegram, Gmail, etc). Similarly, you can also create a link that enables to share an URL, which gives access to the select photos.

You can also create different folders to save different photos. Depending on the time of the year, Google Assistant inside the Google Photos will create a custom montage and offers an option to save the photo. This tool will help you to remember occasions and movements after a year or two.

Smart search and smart delete

As Google Photos can store a lot of photos under the same umbrella, it does support smart search, where it shortlists the photos depending on the search keyword. Searching for a specific place name will make Google Photos showcase all the photos taken at the specific location or photos of the locations. The search algorithm also works for festivals, graduations, marriage, birthday, and a lot more keywords.

Google Photos also has a built-in tool called Free up my space, which will delete the photos stored on the phone storage (which are already uploaded to the internal Google Photos server).

What do I think about Google Photos in total?

There are a lot of apps like Apple iCloud, Microsoft One Cloud. However, one needs to have an iPhone or an iPad, or a Mac to use Apple iCloud and the free storage is limited to 5 GB, and the same applies for the Microsoft One Cloud as well.

In the case of Google Photos, it is cross-platform compatible, one can share files across the internet without requiring a specific OS or hardware. Though there are a lot of apps that work similar to Google Photos, nothing comes close to Google's offering.