Google isn't done trying to take on the behemoth social networks. That
was the message from Google's Senior Vice President of Engineering Vic
Gundotra at the Google I/O conference this week as he announced a new look for the company's Google Plus social network.
But Google is honing in on one major area in the competition: photo
sharing. In addition to the new design, Gundotra announced some new
photo features which he says sets the company's social offerings apart
from Facebook, Twitter and even Instagram. One set of features allows
users to adjust photo effects. Another feature set called Auto-Awesome
automatically adjusts images or groups them together. For instance,
"Auto Awesome Motion" takes multiple images and turns them into an
animated image.
"Our goals are to make people happy and get technology out of the way,"
Gundotra told ABC News. "You know what makes people happy? Great photos
of the people they care about. Today the steps involved to get people
happy is very complicated. Take a photo, remember to get it off the
device, get it on to the machine, edit it, back it up, share it."
On an Android phone, Google has an auto-upload and back-up feature. As
soon as the photo is taken, the full resolution photo is uploaded to
their Google account, which includes 15GB of free storage space. Google
points out that Facebook, Twitter and Instagram don't allow you to share
the full high-resolution images taken on smartphones or with digital
cameras. In addition to that easy upload process, Google is now trying
to ease the photo editing process too and that's what Gundotra thinks
makes Plus superior.
"We are a better photo service. You look better on Google Plus. You look
more beautiful," he said. "It's more enjoyable to share photos in
higher resolution with more beauty, across all your devices on Google
Plus than in any other service. Other services are still beginning to
catch up with us on automatic back-up."
Analysts and industry watchers are impressed by Google's additions,
though they point out that they aren't putting social first. "Its image
tools help everyone look like an amazing photography without any
effort," Brian Solis, a principal analyst at Altimeter Group, told ABC
News. "It's a different play though than that of Instagram. For example,
you upload them to Google to give experiences and memories a home. With
Instagram, you share experiences mostly to share with friends, engage
and interact with your photos as well as theirs."
Gundotra points out, however, that with Google Plus you can decide
specifically who you share your photos with. You can share one photo
with all your friends, your circle of work friends or just one or two of
your closest friends. Still, while the service might serve a different
purpose than Instagram, Gundotra is clear that he wants Google Plus to
be the place people think of when they upload their photos from their
phones. "All of this is coming to mobile. It is days away from coming
to mobile," he said.
While Google Plus has 190 million active monthly users, Instagram has
100 million monthly active users and 40 million photo uploads per day.
Facebook has over a billion users and in 2012 said that 300 million
photos are uploaded a day on the site.
But Google doesn't have to be the only mobile photo service out there to
really compete, says Solis. "Many people will use multiple networks
because people play out their digital lives across multiple platforms,"
he said. "No one place will reach everyone, but Google is doing its part
to stay relevant and pervasive among the fray."
Sources :
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/google-focuses-photos-fight-twitter-facebook-instagram/story?id=19194398#.UZjyLG1ZD6B
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