Google Photos To Launch A Messaging Feature For Quick Conversation And Photo-Sharing

Google Photos is a great platform for storing images but when it comes to sharing them, things are not so easy. To give its massive user base a more convenient way to share memory captured in photos, the platform now has a messaging feature that allows users to share images, chat, and react.

With this new function, users do not need to make a whole album and share it anymore. They can send photos through as well as starting a conversation without leaving the site, as long as the other person also has Google Photos. In this way, images can be the start of a whole conversation, a similar approach to what makes Instagram so successful.

The feature seems like a minor addition but it can serve as a turning point for Google. For so long, Google Photos has been storage and nothing more. Now, with the messaging feature, it can be another social platform. With the boom of smartphones and their increasingly capable picture-taking function, users can take photos and then store them on the platform without thinking much about backing up.

As more people have access to cameras as well as camera phones, pictures have become another way to share memory and experience. They are now a quick and easy way for people to communicate.

For now, the chatting feature only offers the most basic features. Users can create a group chat and add as many users as they wish. The participants can contribute to the thread by commenting, posting more videos, photos, and share them with their own personal collections. To create a chat, under any image, choose “share.” The tab gives you access to the chats you have created or invited to.

According to Janvi Shah, Google’s Product Manager, the new function does not has the ambition to replace any chat app users are using. What they hope for is that it can make sharing memories with your loved ones easier. The rollout will be done gradually in the next few weeks and users can send photos in their original quality when they uploaded it on all platforms, wen, iOS, and Android.

The idea sounds great and it is expected to receive a warm welcome from users. The question here is why Google takes so long to launch such a cool function. This year, Google Photos hit one billion users worldwide, becoming the ninth Google’s product to achieve this milestone. Besides offering storage, it can also encourage users to use other services of Google, like Drive, which allows for backup with higher quality.

Google Photos gained this success in a very short period of time, unlike other services whose user bases were accumulated after many years. Only five months after its official launch in 2015, its number of users has reached 100 million users per month. After two years, the number was 500 million.

In the early days, Google Photos was merely a spinoff of Google+. After becoming a separate service, Photos has had the chance to take advantage of the best features of Google+ without being affected by the shortcomings of the app.

As Snapchat, Instagram, and Facebook develop their own photo-sharing option, there are a large number of pictures taken that never make their way to Google Photos, or not even to the storage of smartphones. This is a prominent market that Google has not touched. This might be the main reason why Google wants to add a social touch to its Photos service.