Google is prepping Drive to host your photos soon
After trying (unsuccessfully) to get Google+ to invade every area of your online existence, Google has been slowly undoing the damage – and the latest product to potentially get freed from the clutches of Google+ is Google Photos.
Formerly Picasa, Google Photos was integrated into Google+ from the social network’s launch, and soon became a favorite way for Android users to back up photos to the cloud, mainly because it was practically built-in to Android. Since its launch, Google has also added a ton of cool features, including auto-enhancements that actually don’t suck, auto-awesome photo collages and GIFs, and even automatically created videos.
It’s seriously a really cool product, but not everyone wants a Google+ account.
For that very reason, it now looks as if Google is planning to eventually make Google Photos a part of Drive, instead of the social network. Right now, Drive users who open the Android app or navigate to their accounts through a web browser are greeted with a link for Google Photos, but a message instructing users: “Stay tuned! Your photos are coming soon.”
It’s not entirely clear whether Google Photos will co-exist in both Google+ and Google Drive, kind of like Google Voice and Google Hangouts are co-existing is a weird tangled up way, or whether Google’s plans include moving it over to Google Drive completely (I’m betting on the latter).
In any case, this is certainly an interesting development, and hopefully means Google will bring a few new features to Photos, as well!
