Google adds easier, private sharing for Photos
Google Photos, the popular app used by over 1 billion people monthly, introduced a new way to share photos that skirts the social media practice of broadcasting to the entire world.
Old way: Create an album in the app, by highlighting several photos, titling the album and then sending a share link to family and friends.
New way: Highlight one or several images, click the Share tab, and send them off to family and friends, who in turn can comment on them and create a back and forth dialogue without all of your social followers seeing the communication.
This would be similar to sharing via an instant message service like Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp. But that same ongoing conversation now takes place in the "Sharing" section of the Photos app.
The twist, says Janvi Shah, a product manager for Google Photos, in a blog post, is that "this gives you one place to find the moments you’ve shared with your friends and family and keep the conversation going."
Like on Facebook, users can like photos, comment and save photos to their own collections.
"This feature isn’t designed to replace any chat apps you already use, but we do hope it improves sharing memories with your friends and family in Google Photos," Shah writes.
Meanwhile, in other Google Photos news: Two new features were recently added to the app.
Facebook said Monday that users would be able to transfer their photos directly from the social network to Google Photos, without having to download them all first. However, you might be waiting a while. The tool debuted in Ireland, but the rest of us won't get it until mid-2020.
A little closer to home, last week Google Photos added the ability to tag people for easier identification, something Google had previously said was unnecessary because its artificial intelligence was so good at recognizing faces.
The snag is that Google isn't perfect and sometimes misses. So now there's a way to fine-tune your collections, as long as there's at least one face in the photo.
Follow USA TODAY's Jefferson Graham on Twitter, @jeffersongraham
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Google Photos has new option for private sharing with grandma, friends
