
Google+ Photos Is Shutting Down - Doubleguitars
http://techcrunch.com/2015/07/20/google-photos-is-shutting-down-on-august-1st/
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aesthetics1
I imagine in the coming months (years?) we will see Google transition away
from Google+ as a catchall platform, and back to standalone solutions similar
to their offerings from the pre-Google+ days.

A bit off-topic:

I think it's the right move for them. Google+ was (and still is) a pretty cool
platform. It has a lot of neat features that existing social networks lack.
Facebook just somehow holds on to their userbase -- probably due to
familiarity and complacency -- and Google just can't disrupt that.

Facebook has turned into a pretty strange place compared to its early years. I
don't see much but 'news' posts, spammy pictures/articles, and clickbait
("DOCTORS HATE HIM, CLICK TO SEE WHY!").

Other platforms are much better for connecting with friends and colleagues,
but no one is leaving Facebook. Feels like Microsoft's 90's/2000's
stranglehold. Personally, I hope to see a Facebook exodus sooner rather than
later.

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tdicola
Can they bring Google Reader back now? I'm still bitter about it being killed
to focus on Google+. Now that Google+ is dead in the water it makes the
decision to kill Reader even worse.

~~~
extc
What's obnoxious is that everyone watching from the outside knew all these
forced G+ moves were annoying and not welcome. One of the worst outcomes, imo,
is the addition of G+ comments on YouTube videos - you end up with comments
like "Check this out" in the video's actual comments section. Those comments
are completely useless and destroy any sort of conversation, if it's even
possible to have one in YT comments.

~~~
amlgsmsn
>What's obnoxious is that everyone watching from the outside knew all these
forced G+ moves were annoying and not welcome

What makes you think it was any different from the inside?

~~~
extc
Optimism, I suppose.

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chimeracoder
I really don't understand Google products sometimes. Google+ Photos is
different from Google Photos? Google Docs, Google Drive, and Google Sheets[0]
are all separate things, though somehow interconnected?

And I'm a technical user. I literally don't understand how (or if) non-
technical users are expected to be able to understand how these work.

But seriously, this has to take the cake. "Google Photos" is replacing
"Google+ Photos", though "Google+" is still around, and you can use Google+ to
share photos from "Google Photos" (but not "Google+ Photos", at least not
anymore).

[0] Going to drive.google.com and then clicking "New Sheet" will redirect me
to docs.google.com, even though Google Sheets was (at least at one point)
presented as a "new" product distinct from Google Docs. At least that's how it
seemed to me when they launched it.

~~~
ars
See here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9888387](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9888387)

"Google’s product strategy: Make two of everything"

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c5karl
How much longer before they kill Picasa and Picasaweb, which just provide a
different UI (and different editing software) for the same archive of photos?

~~~
prawn
I have never seen Picasa used for anything but spam. Can't think of anyone I
know who actually uses it properly.

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jaredsohn
I converted my parents over to Picasa when it came out and they still use it;
they don't have interest in moving family photos over to the cloud.

I am assuming that your comment re: spam is about is about Picasaweb (it
doesn't make much sense to me for users to submit spam into their own desktop
software). Perhaps a reason for this is that it mostly gets used by people who
started with the desktop software and those people keep the photos private so
that the only photos seen in public are spam?

~~~
prawn
I get emails from companies who upload their product photos to Picasa and then
use the share feature to spam. No matter how many I marked as spam, they still
make it through unhindered.

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jaytaylor
I am curious why they aren't automatically migrating all existing user content
from "+Photos" to the new "Photos" service?

Seems like it would be an easy win.

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jeffgreco
I'm not sure they aren't. All of my Google+ photos wound up in Google Photos
without any work on my part, other than maybe actually accessing
photos.google.com.

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blintzing
Isn't it funny that we're even having this conversation? That Google can offer
two products, differentiated by a single character (Google+ Photos and Google
Photos), with few obvious indicators as to which I should use?

It's confusing to me, but trying to explain it to my mom is absolutely
impossible. I wonder whether the average user even knows there's a difference
between the two. It's a perfect example of unnecessary redundancy.

~~~
aesthetics1
I really feel like it is just to cleanse it of the connection to Google+. The
product should have been an evolution of Google+ Photos, but they are clearly
trying to de-couple services from Google+.

Look at the Inbox vs Gmail experiment for example. While not tied to Google+,
Inbox runs parallel to Gmail and accesses the same things. Just a different
window dressing. I'm sure many at Google want to see Inbox take over Gmail at
some point.

This is one of the reasons I doubt we ever see a Material Design Gmail. I
think they'll run with it until Inbox is "ready".

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pablo-massa
I think that the strategy there was make a new product (Inbox) to test how to
reinvent Gmail. Gmail needs a redesign but have a very large user base to take
the risk of make mistakes. With Inbox they are free to innovate and try to fix
the email problem without carrying a giant on they shoulders. I think even
Google don't know yet what's is going to do after.

~~~
aesthetics1
Precisely my point!

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lnanek2
I hope this means I get the gallery app back on my phone instead of that
godawful photos app. The photos app can't find half the photos on my device
since it doesn't seem to have a functioning media scanner any more, and it
took me half an hour to get the thing to spit out the path to a photo once
when I desperately trying to copy it over to my computer to use it for
something. Not that it is easy to copy anything in Android any more since you
can't just mount the phone as storage any more, you have to use some broken
media transfer protocol that doesn't work natively on mac and the official
Android transfer app doesn't work. All this with a Nexus 6 that should be a
top of the line Google experience device. I just want Gallery back and the
ability to see the photos on my device and where they are, Photos is terrible
and makes me fight it every time I open it.

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Avshalom
Christ was that a galling experience on update: expecting me to get online to
see the photos on my device that I had just taken.

BTW: I am unrelated to them but I do recommend QuickPic, it does pretty much
exactly what you'd want and very little else.

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zatkin
>"They already made us abandon our "picasaweb" stuff for Google+ Photos.
Killing off Google+ Photos sends the clear message "do not rely on Google for
your photo storage needs". Not that shuffling gigabytes of photos around every
couple of years isn't fun but, well, it isn't fun."

From the TechCrunch comments.

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mvgoogler
I work on the backend for Google Photos (and Google+ Photos and Picasaweb).

Picasaweb, Google+ Photos and Google Photos all store the photos in the same
place.

There was never any need to "shuffle gigabytes of photos" when moving from
picasaweb to G+ Photos and there won't be any needed to move from G+ Photos to
Google Photos.

I don't see howany of that adds up to "do not rely on Google for your photo
storage needs".

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brohoolio
Google is amazing but in the same token my grandma and my mom were using
Google+ Photos. Imagine trying to explain to non-technical folks in their 60s
and 90s what all of this means.

You can bet I'm gonna think twice about recommending any Google product to my
family just because of the time sink in doing support.

~~~
estel
Doesn't this just mean that you need to click a different button to access the
photos? There's a hierarchical change to make Photos a top-level product, and
the product itself has had a facelift.

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tomlu
It's even the same button. The old photos launcher opened the photos page of
G+, the new launcher opens a separate app.

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pasbesoin
I use Gmail, Maps, search, and, to a limited extent, the original, "basic"
applications within Google Apps (is that still what it's called?).

For the rest, Google has basically taught me not to make the investment.

(I don't have any Adword nor advertising needs, at the moment. Otherwise, I
imagine I would be using them.)

I was thinking of switching from the default text messaging application to
Hangouts, on my phone, for the sake of maintaining a history of texts that the
default app will dump beyond a certain count, but after incidentally running
across comments about how fucked over Hangouts apparently has become, I'm
pretty much not going there.

Google seems to be doing fine, revenue-wise, but they are losing me as...
well, I guess I'm one bit of the "merchandise" that forms the basis of their
revenue.

I don't hate Google. And I like the initiative on security and, "true names"
aside, privacy. But I'm not excited any more about their product development.

Even in the physical world, I understand the impending, huge market for
autonomous cars, and I like the pressure that Fiber has been providing to the
erstwhile moribund large-scale ISP marketplace. But I miss the "moonshots."
Although maybe they gave e.g. solar power enough of a nudge -- if not a push
-- when it needed it, domestically.

P.S. Personal pet peeve. In my work, particularly in large organizations, I
saw the need for something like Wave. (Anyone who's ever wasted time and
effort on the outside of an extended and essential email chain conversation
might relate -- as one example. Or trying to effectively maintain same and
keep all in the loop and revisions straight, when on the inside of one.) But
the terribly overburdensome (in terms of client processing demands for average
clients of that time) and partially cryptic UI were a big initial turnoff.

Back to Gmail and Apps and whatnot. What Googlers actually seem to use for
their own work, and lives (Maps, Picasa now become whatever...), seems to be
better maintained. "Initiatives" to "secure markets" (Plus, I'm looking at
you)? Yeah, not cutting it.

Initially, I would have given Plus a chance. Except that, for much of what
interested me on it, I didn't care to go about publicly using my "true name"
(health, psychology, and technical topics where some of my opinions might put
off a potential employer).

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mark_l_watson
From the article, it sounded like you had to manually transfer you pictures.
Not so.

I just went to photos.google.com for the first time and the last ten years of
my pictures were there in chronological order.

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vivram
The new google photos is not a complete port of google+ photos. I enjoyed
google+ photos. It had a poor man's HDR and a whole lot of other editing
features which were functional and useful. They removed them all in the new
google photos. Another feature I miss is the auto-panorama feature. I can't
see panos generated automatically any more after my account was migrated.
Hoping they are brought back soon.

But I still like the idea of forking out the photos. That was the only thing I
was using in google+

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hackaflocka
Why can't they fold it in with the new Photos service?

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magicalist
I'm pretty sure that's exactly what is happening and Techcrunch is just
confused.

There's no "tool" to migrate your photos...all my photos are already in the
new app.

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reustle
No thanks, I'll keep my photos in Google Drive. I'm sure the interface is much
better, but it is easy to sync drive with another service down the road if the
time comes where that is necessary.

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Veratyr
You can actually sync from Google Drive to Google Photos (and vice versa):
[https://support.google.com/photos/answer/6156103?hl=en](https://support.google.com/photos/answer/6156103?hl=en)

You get your Drive and your shiny interface.

~~~
reustle
Ah thanks. I just created the "My Photos" folder automatically through google
drive settings, and it automatically added every photo I've ever sent through
google hangouts. Yikes, who wants that?

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newobj
Confused beyond the point of caring, that's saying a lot.

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georgehm
Just came to know that it is not possible to rearrange (organize option from
G+ photos) photos in an album.. its strange Google missed it...

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dragonwriter
Organization seems to be the most common missing feature from Google cloud
offerings (its, IMO, the biggest problem when you have more than a few items
in Google Play Books.)

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eCa
I have passed the point where I would use any service Google launches, where
they keep data I want to keep; and it's not because of Snowden.

They are acting like they are a bunch of startup teams constantly getting
aqui-hired, with services getting changed, merged or canceled. I couldn't
possibly recommend any of their services[1] to non-technical people, at any
time something will stop working.

I'm not a wall to throw things at to see what sticks.

[1] Beyond search, of course

~~~
teaneedz
Search is replaceable with DuckDuckGo for me.

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drivingmenuts
How many photo products has Google had? Have _any_ of them been successful?

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saurik
I thought people liked the Picasa app? (But then again, I never used it myself
;P.)

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plorkyeran
Picasa's an acquisition, and all of the stuff Google added to it was
eventually folded into G+ with little fanfare so I'm guessing it wasn't a huge
success.

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gcb0
wow. i have lots and lots of pictures, mostly hosted to share on forums, that
were uploaded all the way back on picasa.

then picasaweb. then google photo web. or something. photos still there.

then i was forced to join google+ to continue uploading/editing/sharing. And i
think it became google+ photos. or google photos as everyone called it. i can
still see all the pictures i uploaded to picasa showing as my pictures on my
plus profile.

and now, i have no clue what they mean with this announcement. will i have to
migrate? am i already on the right photos? will i lose things if i do not
migrate?

i have backups so i can't care less. what worries me A LOT is that those
photos are linked on all short of forums and people will not find the
information i produced if the links dies.

Thanks for "organizing the world information", google.

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mwnz
Google+ had photos?

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jbeja
Next: Golang is shutting down.

