Google Photos now has 200M users, some of whom love pomeranians

By Trevor Mogg May 18, 2016

google photo social app photos ios — Image used with permission by copyright holder

A year on from its launch, Google Photos has picked up 200 million monthly active users. The news of the app’s steadily growing popularity was delivered by Google CEO Sundar Pichai on Wednesday during the opening day of the company’s I/O developer bash in Mountain View.

Of course, seeing that the cross-platform Photos app was spun out of Google+, many users will’ve been on board from the start. However, the company’s data shows it’s picked up 100 million new users in the last seven months, decent growth it’ll be keen to see continue.

Speaking to an audience of several thousand at the Shoreline Ampitheatre located just a short walk from the company’s Googleplex headquarters, Pichai highlighted the service’s smart computer-vision system with a few amusing tidbits.

For example, the image recognition technology, which allows users to search albums without prior tagging, has already applied up to two trillion labels to pictures. This, the CEO said, is what allows us to find the right picture when we search for images of a pomeranian dog. After revealing that 24 billion of these labels are for selfies, Pichai joked that there are quite a few “pomeranian selfies” among them before promptly projecting a collection of the cute doggie pics on a large screen behind him. While this would suggest that pomeranians are going around with smartphones taking pictures of themselves, we think we know what he meant.

Allowing users to edit, organize, and store their images in the cloud, Google has been gradually adding new features to its Photos app since its launch a year ago.

Thanks to the most recent update, rolled out last week, users can finally start adding comments to individual images, while the introduction of “smart suggestions” means that when an album is shared with you, the app now automatically recommends pictures that you might want to add to that album by examining data such as the shot’s location and when it was taken.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics

Contributing Editor

Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…

Mobile

Apple’s new iPad Pro now has the same M2 chip as the latest MacBook Pro

The M2 iPad Pro.

The 2022 iPad Pro has finally been announced and, after months of speculation, seems to be a solid step up from last year's version thanks to the M2 chipset that it boasts — the same found in the redesigned MacBook Air and 13-inch MacBook Pro. The shared DNA between the 2022 iPad Pro and MacBook Pro makes a lot of sense following Apple's announcement earlier this year that iPadOS 16 would push to make the line between Apple tablets and laptops thinner than ever before.

To achieve this, the 2022 iPad Pro comes with the highly anticipated OS upgrade installed right out of the box. While there are still plenty of differences between iPadOS and MacOS, the new Stage Manager app is meant to make multitasking on iPads just as simple as on MacBooks. With the M2 SoC (system on chip), switching between tasks and apps should feel smoother than on previous iPad generations. That said, Stage Manager will run on older iPads despite their lack of the M2 chipset, Apple has announced.

Mobile

The Pixel 6 gave Google momentum — now the Pixel 7 has to keep it

Someone holding the Google Pixel 6 Pro and Pixel 6a next to each other.

As Google gears up to launch the Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro, it's worth noting that the company's Pixel line has never been more in the spotlight. Despite never selling as much as Samsung, Xiaomi, or even OnePlus, there's always been a — shall we say — outsized amount of coverage dedicated to these phones relative to how much they've sold.

Intended to be the iPhones of Android, Google has been working to get the Pixel attention that befits that status. The Pixel 6 finally got Google the attention it wanted, and now the stakes have never been higher.

Mobile

The Google Home app finally has the big redesign you’ve been waiting for

Google Home icon on home screen.

A new, major Google Home design overhaul is coming soon to the delight of users everywhere. Many have been unhappy with the Google Home app's UI for quite some time as its streamlined approach to providing information seemingly took some agency away from smart home device owners. The new redesign, however, aims to give users more control over their devices and settings than ever before.

While the redesign certainly retains a more straightforward, minimalist look to its UI elements, the settings themselves are as abundant as ever — giving users full control over every aspect of their smart home. The newfound control doesn't end with more granular settings, however, as the redesign is meant to be fully customizable so that users can prioritize the aspects of smart home living most applicable to them.