History




Google Photos is the standalone successor to the photo features previously embedded in Google+, the company's social network. Google launched the social network to compete with Facebook, but the service never became as popular and Facebook remained the Internet's preferred website for social networking and photo sharing. Google+, however, offered photo storage and organizational tools that surpassed Facebook's in power, though Google+ lacked the user base to use it. By leaving the social network affiliation, the Photos service changed its association from a sharing platform to a private library platform.

On February 12, 2016, Google announced that the Picasa desktop application would be discontinued on March 15, 2016, followed by the closure of the Picasa Web Albums service on May 1, 2016. Google stated that the primary reason for retiring Picasa was that it wanted to focus its efforts "entirely on a single photo service"; the cross-platform, web-based Google Photos.

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Features

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Storage

Google Photos has three storage settings: "High quality", "Original quality" and "Express quality". High quality includes photo and video storage for photos up to 16 megapixels and videos up to 1080p resolution (the maximum resolutions for average smartphone users in 2015). Original quality preserves the original resolution and quality of the photos and videos. For the first three generations of the Google Pixel phones, Google Photos offers unlimited storage at "Original quality" for free. The original Pixel had no limits to this offer, while the Pixel 2 and 3 only offered unlimited storage at "Original quality" for photos and videos taken before January 16, 2021 and January 31, 2022 respectively, with all photos and videos taken after those dates being uploaded at "High quality" instead. The Pixel 3a and onwards do not offer unlimited storage at "Original quality", with the Pixel 4, Pixel 4a, Pixel 4a (5G), and Pixe
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