
Google just launched three new photography apps - Tomte
https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/11/16763544/google-appsperiments-storyboard-selfissimo-scrubbies-apps-photography-motion-stills
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romwell
Great, three more products I won't care for, and nothing to show for a Picasa
replacement (offline, native desktop photo library/viewer/editor) which I
still use, but can no longer download (from Google, at least).

And given that it's "garage-style" "experimental", etc, these tools will
probably have the lifespan of a firefly, to be Konmari'd away just after
getting an ardent following from the never-sufficiently-many devoted users.

But I won't be one of them.

~~~
gitgud
What happened to Picasa? It's still incredibly useful. I just wish they had a
Linux release...

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romwell
They decided to kill it so that people would start using Google Photos.

This would greatly encourage people to keep all their photos in the cloud,
tying them to the Google ecosystem and giving Google plenty of data to munch
on, at the detriment of user experience.

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paxy
6 months later - "Google retires three photography apps"

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ulfw
Six months? You give them more credit than they deserve.

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ulfw
These look like childish demo apps. Has a summer intern written these? Why are
they launched under Google brand?

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bwang29
I don't understand the purpose of publishing small technical pieces, put it
there, and highly likely forget about it later and never come back to make
anything really meaningful out of it.

This is at the best Google's "user/product study" to figure out if a product
concept is worth developing further, but if you don't have a smart plot and
meaningful conversation generation in the comic-gen-app, you won't be able to
understand the actual reception of such a concept and risk killing a good idea
pre-maturely.

But hell, why would theverge cover apps for the purpose of user study testing
from Google.

~~~
unholiness
Replace Google with a VC and you have the current state of startups.

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bob_theslob646
What is Google doing with all of these images and videos?

It has to monetize on these somehow or someway?

Are they trying to get us addicted to taking photos and videos?

Very confused.

~~~
romwell
>Are they trying to get us addicted to taking photos and videos?

No, everyone likes taking pictures already.

What they want is that all those random snaps and associated metadata should
be stored on their servers. That's something even the Stasi would never dream
of, but we're fine, because Google promised to do no evil some time ago, and
Facebook is doing the same thing.

~~~
kumarvvr
One of the most concerning things this year (2017) was the incessant talk of
Zukerberg getting into politics.

Our democratic principles cannot dis-allow him to contest. At the same time,
imagine a rouge group of developers within FB, guided by Zuckerberg, digging
dirt on political opponents and info-sniping anyone in his way to power.

Google might have browsing habits, purchasing habits and perhaps emails
(though who, especially young people, communicate their thoughts through
email?) but FB has peoples thoughts, political leanings, influence of news on
their world outlook, detailed data on how to manipulate them, what angle of a
piece of news will best influence them, their personal lives, their friends,
family and acquaintances, their dissent, their passions and a very detailed
timeline of their lives.

And they also have detailed real time analysis on chats in WhatsApp, browsing
habits, detailed biometric information, GPS location details and what not.

We have a lot more to fear from FB.

Imagine how useful that info and power will be to a politician.

Imagine, as a retaliation against European Anti-trust and data security
issues, FB delays implementing tools to fight Russian social media influence
in Europe for a few weeks before election?

Imagine FB using AI to automatically change news stories to feed off the
leanings of it's audience.

Imagine FB preventing flow of atrocities within communities.

Imagine FB covertly publishing dirt on people trying to investigate it.

If FB went rouge, is it possible for the current political and media systems
to really counter its onslaught?

The whole world should be afraid of FB. It has too much data and too much
power. Its the one true cult.

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r00fus
These all look fantastic, but "appsperiments" is a horrible category name.
Really hope that was Verge being silly.

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xrd
Storyboard is absolutely incredible if you like comics. Takes a video and
makes it a completely different story. we

~~~
xrd
[https://twitter.com/xrd/status/940375296682762240?s=09](https://twitter.com/xrd/status/940375296682762240?s=09)

