Google announced yesterday, that as part of the transition to Google Photos, the Google+ Photos service would begin closing down, starting with the Android service on the 1st of August. The product lead behind Google Photos Anil Sabharwal has spoken about the closure on Google+, clarifying a few points on the service transition.
The key points of the transition are:
- The great photo and video sharing service that’s part of Google+ is unaffected. You can continue to post photos and videos, and your followers will be able to comment and +1 as before. No change.
- All of the photos, videos, and albums you have already shared on Google+, including their posts, comments, and +1s are also unaffected. An easy way to find these is to visit the Photos tab of your Profile page.
- The private photo management component of Google+, which includes backup, editing, creations, private album management (album management for shared content is still available on Google+), and sharing to other apps, is being replaced by Google Photos.
Anil accepts that for Google+ users the third point is perhaps the sticking point, but points out that the move to Google Photos has benefits, which leaving team members maintaining Google+ photos would slow down the development.
The argument is solid, though does cement the idea of many Google+ users that the service is being stripped down to almost nothing, though according to Bradley Horowitz Photos and Streams VP, the service isn’t going anywhere, though it will transition to promote the things it’s great at such as communities.
Google Photos is pretty great, give it a chance and make up your own mind. There’s also some neat new features in Google Photos latest update.
