Google are busy throwing their money around again. The company has just announced a new cloud storage solution that offers free, unlimited photo and video storage for anyone, no strings attached.
The only compromise is that your photos must be under 16 megapixels and your video must be at most 1080p. As the vast majority of users shoot well under those limits, it really shouldn’t be an issue to most. Even if it is, Google has reassured everyone that the compression used will not alter the visual quality.
When comparing this offer to the competition, the implications are massive. There is currently no other company aside from Flickr that offers the same level of free service. Even so, Flickr still only offers up to one terabyte and forces you to watch full-page advertisements in order to fund its service.
Google on the other hand doesn’t need to use pop-up ads at all, as the photo sharing experience ties directly into their own targeted-ad focused goals. Their primary source of revenue comes from curating and mining user data so that advertisements can be tailored, therefore increasing the engagement that the user makes. With this service, Google is tapping into a gold mine of user information and geographical data which can be used to personalise your ad experience. Most companies don’t have the technology to efficiently make use of this, but Google does. It’s their primary business model and the foundations of the company.
The technology is intelligent enough to pick out specific places in your photos, identify the products you are holding and even figure out who your friends are. Not only that, but it even edits your pictures for you, adjusting exposure and combining burst shots into animated GIFs. Very impressive. Google Vice President Bradley Horowitz did stress that the technology was still fairly new but said it would only improve following the launch. With Google’s expertise in this particular field, you can rest assured that it will turn out to be a great service.
For more on Google, visit What Mobile’s dedicated Google page.