Google Photos Hits One Year

Google photos has been around for a year. I use it and love it. Besides the obvious benefit of an additional free (lower resolution but still perfectly serviceable) photo backup, Google does a lot of fun stuff with your pictures. Google makes photo albums, collages, animated GIFs out of burst photos, and really smart videos of events. It’s pretty incredible what the power of machine learning can do.

Check out the screenshot above. I literally did nothing to the pictures I uploaded, but Google knows a dog when it sees it. It also, apparently, knows a dog dressed as a penguin, which is crazy-pants awesome.

Some people may think it’s creepy, but I think giving up a bit of privacy is well worth seeing pics of The Bug Dog whenever I type “dog” without all the fiddly tagging other systems (coughApplecough) use.

Also: Emoji search.