 Our smartphones have become the best cameras that most of us have, so we're taking more photos and videos than we ever have before. But this creates a challenge, managing all those photos and videos. Like, when I finish shooting this video, what am I supposed to do with it? Well, there are a lot of services out there that are supposed to help you handle this problem. But, frankly, they aren't very good. One of the best has actually been Google's, which it offered through Google+. The problem there was that most of us didn't want to use Google+, storing your life's memories inside a social network just felt kind of weird. Well, Google's announcing their new solution to this problem. They're calling it simply photos, and I have to say, it may be the photo management solution that I've been waiting for. Billions of photos are taken every single day. The problem is, we thought that taking all these photos and videos would mean that we could relive these moments later. And it turns out, it's actually a lot harder. The sheer volume of this has made it near impossible. We needed to go back to first principles and look at this and really understand the problem space and rethink and rebuild from the ground up. So, the Google Plus version of photos is dead, and in its place comes the new Google Photos, a total solution for managing the archive of all the pictures you've ever taken. That means an uploader for your Mac and Windows PCs, and new apps for iOS and Android. And starting today, Google will start storing, for free, nearly identical versions of the photos that you're uploading, downscaling them slightly in exchange for giving you unlimited uploads. And in our tests, most of the photos really do look almost the same as their original version, particularly when you're just browsing them on your phone. The best way that I like to think about it is, you know, drawing the comparison in music. This is like us saying, we're going to store all your CDs as MP3s. Unlimited, for free. And I think that's pretty compelling for a lot of people who want to be able to maintain these memories and be able to do so. Now, if you're the type of person who wants to store your original down to the last byte, we still offer 15 gigabytes for free, shared across your Google services, and one terabyte you can buy, for example, for $10 a buck. But this really unlocks it for everyone, to be able to have their memories, their entire life, backed up. So, an online photo management service needs to do more than just store your photos. It should also help you enjoy them, and that means finding things. So, here's where the power of Google Search comes in. Google's using all of its machine learning technology to help understand what's in your photos. Even if you've never tagged them, it recognizes famous landmarks, it knows what a boat looks like, it knows what a whale looks like. All you have to do is tap in keywords and Google will find it inside your photos. It creates a whole new way of looking through your photo archive, and it's something I think people are really going to enjoy. We have this really great technology and we tried to decide, like, how should we surface this? What's the best way that users are going to really even understand how this would work? And what we found was that people describe photos in basically four different categories. One is who's in the photo, two is where was the photo taken, three is what is in the photo, is it a dog, is it a hat, whatever it may be, and then four is what is the type of photo, is it a panorama, is it a video. So, you just tap that blue search disk, and what you'll find here is your entire life of photos automatically organized into these little categories. So, I have all my people, all the important places in my life, so the place I live, the place my girlfriend's family lives, the place we go in Hawaii, my hometown in Garland, Texas. We have all the things that are interesting in your photos, so all my food photos, my photos from the beach. And these are sort of dynamically generated based on what you care about. Based on what I have, yeah. You're a huge sky person. Evidently. You'd live in a cloud if you could. So, now that I've uploaded my entire photo archive to Google, it's been really fun to see what Google is finding in those photos. And one of the best things they've found is faces of all my friends and family. Google simply can judge based on how many photos you've taken of a single person how important they are in your life. And so, when I click on faces inside Google Photos, it now shows me my mom, my dad, my brother, my sister-in-law, and most importantly, my little nephew. And I can now go back years in time, even as their faces have changed over the years, Google can still hone in on what they look like and show me basically our entire relationship. There's a flip side to all of this algorithmic wizardry, though, and it's the creeping sense that now Google knows more about me than it ever has before. Talk to us a little bit about what privacy controls there are on photos. Is like geo-tagging just kind of like the price of admission or do users retain some sort of control over maybe metadata around photos? Yeah, the goal of Google Photos is to start on a foundation of user trust. That's the most important thing. We're asking you to store your lifetime of memories with us. So, at the most base level, there's a lot of these things that you can say, look, I don't want, and I choose not to do. So, for example, you could say, I don't want to do the face groupings, and you have the ability to turn that off. In the cases of geo-information, location history is something that you can disable and say, I don't want to have location history used as an input. But all of these things are purely private again, only for you. They're stored on the content of the photo or associated with your account, only visible to you. So, we're definitely trying to do a lot more here, and we're going to continue to do more because for us, again, it's really on the foundation of building that trust with our users. So, after playing with it for a couple of weeks, I'm convinced. Google Photos is the best free solution on the market for most people. And I feel that way because I trust Google with those photos. But if they were ever to start selling me ads or try to sell me products or services based on what they were seeing in my photos, well, that trust will go away in a hurry. Google says that they have no plans on doing that, and I hope they keep their word. But even if you decide Google Photos isn't for you, it's important you start thinking about the photos you're taking on your phone. Because if it falls into the water or you lose it or it gets stolen, all those memories are gone. And they won't just be lost to you, they'll be lost to everybody else in your life who might have enjoyed them. So, the time has come to start thinking about this. It has never been cheaper, it's never been easier, and it has never been more important.
 Our smartphones have become the best cameras that most of us have, so we're taking more photos and videos than we ever have before.
 But this creates a challenge, managing all those photos and videos.
 Like, when I finish shooting this video, what am I supposed to do with it?
 Well, there are a lot of services out there that are supposed to help you handle this problem.
 But, frankly, they aren't very good.
 One of the best has actually been Google's, which it offered through Google+.
 The problem there was that most of us didn't want to use Google+, storing your life's memories inside a social network just felt kind of weird.
 Well, Google's announcing their new solution to this problem.
 They're calling it simply photos, and I have to say, it may be the photo management solution that I've been waiting for.
 Billions of photos are taken every single day.
 The problem is, we thought that taking all these photos and videos would mean that we could relive these moments later.
 And it turns out, it's actually a lot harder.
 The sheer volume of this has made it near impossible.
 We needed to go back to first principles and look at this and really understand the problem space and rethink and rebuild from the ground up.
 So, the Google Plus version of photos is dead, and in its place comes the new Google Photos,
 a total solution for managing the archive of all the pictures you've ever taken.
 That means an uploader for your Mac and Windows PCs, and new apps for iOS and Android.
 And starting today, Google will start storing, for free, nearly identical versions of the photos that you're uploading,
 downscaling them slightly in exchange for giving you unlimited uploads.
 And in our tests, most of the photos really do look almost the same as their original version,
 particularly when you're just browsing them on your phone.
 The best way that I like to think about it is, you know, drawing the comparison in music.
 This is like us saying, we're going to store all your CDs as MP3s.
 Unlimited, for free.
 And I think that's pretty compelling for a lot of people who want to be able to maintain these memories and be able to do so.
 Now, if you're the type of person who wants to store your original down to the last byte,
 we still offer 15 gigabytes for free, shared across your Google services,
 and one terabyte you can buy, for example, for $10 a buck.
 But this really unlocks it for everyone, to be able to have their memories, their entire life, backed up.
 So, an online photo management service needs to do more than just store your photos.
 It should also help you enjoy them, and that means finding things.
 So, here's where the power of Google Search comes in.
 Google's using all of its machine learning technology to help understand what's in your photos.
 Even if you've never tagged them, it recognizes famous landmarks,
 it knows what a boat looks like, it knows what a whale looks like.
 All you have to do is tap in keywords and Google will find it inside your photos.
 It creates a whole new way of looking through your photo archive,
 and it's something I think people are really going to enjoy.
 We have this really great technology and we tried to decide, like, how should we surface this?
 What's the best way that users are going to really even understand how this would work?
 And what we found was that people describe photos in basically four different categories.
 One is who's in the photo, two is where was the photo taken,
 three is what is in the photo, is it a dog, is it a hat, whatever it may be,
 and then four is what is the type of photo, is it a panorama, is it a video.
 So, you just tap that blue search disk, and what you'll find here is
 your entire life of photos automatically organized into these little categories.
 So, I have all my people, all the important places in my life,
 so the place I live, the place my girlfriend's family lives,
 the place we go in Hawaii, my hometown in Garland, Texas.
 We have all the things that are interesting in your photos,
 so all my food photos, my photos from the beach.
 And these are sort of dynamically generated based on what you care about.
 Based on what I have, yeah.
 You're a huge sky person.
 Evidently.
 You'd live in a cloud if you could.
 So, now that I've uploaded my entire photo archive to Google,
 it's been really fun to see what Google is finding in those photos.
 And one of the best things they've found is faces of all my friends and family.
 Google simply can judge based on how many photos you've taken of a single person
 how important they are in your life.
 And so, when I click on faces inside Google Photos, it now shows me my mom,
 my dad, my brother, my sister-in-law, and most importantly, my little nephew.
 And I can now go back years in time,
 even as their faces have changed over the years,
 Google can still hone in on what they look like
 and show me basically our entire relationship.
 There's a flip side to all of this algorithmic wizardry, though,
 and it's the creeping sense that now Google knows more about me than it ever has before.
 Talk to us a little bit about what privacy controls there are on photos.
 Is like geo-tagging just kind of like the price of admission
 or do users retain some sort of control over maybe metadata around photos?
 Yeah, the goal of Google Photos is to start on a foundation of user trust.
 That's the most important thing.
 We're asking you to store your lifetime of memories with us.
 So, at the most base level, there's a lot of these things that you can say,
 look, I don't want, and I choose not to do.
 So, for example, you could say, I don't want to do the face groupings,
 and you have the ability to turn that off.
 In the cases of geo-information,
 location history is something that you can disable and say,
 I don't want to have location history used as an input.
 But all of these things are purely private again, only for you.
 They're stored on the content of the photo or associated with your account, only visible to you.
 So, we're definitely trying to do a lot more here, and we're going to continue to do more
 because for us, again, it's really on the foundation of building that trust with our users.
 So, after playing with it for a couple of weeks, I'm convinced.
 Google Photos is the best free solution on the market for most people.
 And I feel that way because I trust Google with those photos.
 But if they were ever to start selling me ads or try to sell me products or services
 based on what they were seeing in my photos, well, that trust will go away in a hurry.
 Google says that they have no plans on doing that, and I hope they keep their word.
 But even if you decide Google Photos isn't for you,
 it's important you start thinking about the photos you're taking on your phone.
 Because if it falls into the water or you lose it or it gets stolen, all those memories are gone.
 And they won't just be lost to you, they'll be lost to everybody else in your life who might have enjoyed them.
 So, the time has come to start thinking about this.
 It has never been cheaper, it's never been easier, and it has never been more important.