With Google unveiling its free, unlimited photo service, competition of photo storage service is expected to grow fiercer among global tech companies. Further, concerns have been raised over the tech heavyweight's collecting mountains of personal information.
Last week, global Internet giant Google introduced the unlimited photo storage service “Google Photos” at its I/O developer conference in San Francisco. It is a new type of photo application, which arranges photos on smartphones based on Google’s algorithm and make videos. The service analyzes things in photos and automatically categorizes them based on the contents of the image or video.
Within a few hours Google Photos was launched, it reached 50,000 downloads. Experts say the popularity will continue as it is also able to be used on Apple’s iPhone ecosystem apart from Android phones.
Google’s announcement of the service wowed both analysts and users with its “free” storage service. Among other photo services provided by global tech firms Apple, Yahoo and Amazon, Google is the only firm providing “free” services without any condition.
Apple charges $240 for one-year use of 1 terabyte of Apple’s iCloud storage while Dropbox and Microsoft each require $100 and $84. Amazon provides unlimited storage service but users should buy an annual subscription for $99. Google Photos does not require any charge from users.
Market watchers say reasons behind the tech firm provides free services is to secure more long-term users by giving up short-term cash cow.
Google Photos is expected to eventually complete its “Deep Learning” project based Google’s machine learning technology. Deep Learning is an algorithm-based technology in which machines like computers recognize things like human brain. Google has been carrying out the project since 2014 by hiring and acquiring relevant experts and companies.
When the project completes, Google can search personal information simply like users search information on their e-mail. As the technology also allows facial recognition, Google can have access to privacy without their personal information such as name or address. This all means that Google gives up a short-term profit for the sake of more valuable things – users’ data.
The data accumulated can also be linked to Google’s biggest cash cow – advertising revenue. Last year, it raked in around $11.8 billion in advertising revenue. More personal information the company gets, the higher revenue it can earn because the analysis of personal information can be best allocated to advertisement. For instance, a soft drink a person is holding in a photo can be a hint for base data in customized advertisement.
The Google’s attempt was also seen from its other services unveiled at its I/O developer conference. Other services introduced were all designed to gather personal information rather than gaining revenue – Smart Home operating system “Brillo,” Smart Home platform “Weave,” mobile payment system “Android Pay,” fingerprint operating system “Android M”
American media outlet Business Insider reported that, “Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”
It also added, that “Google needs to be everywhere because Google's business is based on data.”
Apart from collecting data, Google wants to preoccupy the photo application market. The U.S. media outlets reported that Google’s latest move may give a shock to tech giants such as Apple and Microsoft. They predicted that competition centering on photo application services would grow fiercer as Google Photos is satisfying users with services which photo apps of other tech firms such as Amazon and Apple cannot.
The U.S. media USA Today recently compared photo apps of Apple, Yahoo and Google, saying, “The smartphone photo wars begin.”
