Earlier today, Google publicly announced that the company will be shutting down its photo hosting services Google+ Photos starting August 1. Google isn’t shy about shutting down popular services. Some of the bigger closures have included Google Talk, Google Reader, Google Wave, and a laundry list of other abandoned projects.
Jump Off Google+ Photos While You Can
The good news is that Google is giving users plenty of time to move their photos from Google+ Photos to another photo sharing solution of their choice. So far, the company hasn’t made any mention of a deadline, but they won’t be hosting user photos forever. During this time, users will be be able to access their photos through Google Takeout.
What Are Your Options?
Google+ Photos wasn’t the most popular photo sharing platform, so there is actually a pretty good chance that this won’t affect many users. Android users had the option to automatically backup photos to Google+ Photos for backup, but many socialites will probably have duplicates of their photos spread far across the internet. If that happens to be the case,then users will probably be content in letting their photos go down with the ship.
On the other hand, users who do document their entire life on Google+ Photos will you’ll probably be very interested in keeping their photos alive and well. One approach is to painstakingly download every photo to a hard drive and then upload it to another photo sharing site, but an easier method will be to use Google’s new Google Photos app.
The New Kid on the Block
That’s right, Google is just dropping the “+” branding. Google will be using the same servers it hosted its Google+ Photos data and is already migrating the data from one service to another. So users who want to keep using Google’s services can just wait for the app to update on its own sometime this week for Android users and sometime soon for iOS users.
So, will you be taking all of your Google+ Photos and making the great migration over to the new Google Photos, or has the app’s glorified name change left a nasty taste in your mouth?
