Google Photos A Decade Later Still Indispensable
Google Photos has reached its 10-year milestone. Evolving from Google+'s photo features, it has quickly become a cornerstone of the Android experience. As noted by Taylor Kerns at AP, it's considered the one Google service he finds indispensable. This sentiment is widely shared, as Google Photos offers top-tier photo management and editing capabilities. Although storage limits have become more restrictive recently, a point we'll revisit, it arguably remains the leading photo storage application in 2025.
Over the past decade, Google has consistently added valuable features to Photos, solidifying its position as the benchmark for photo storage solutions. The journey hasn't been without its bumps, though. Let's take a look back at how Google Photos has transformed, for better or worse, through the years.
The Core Appeal: Why We Fell for Google Photos
Automatic Backups and a Brilliant Search Tool
A significant part of what makes Google Photos so effective, even in 2025, is its adherence to the core features it launched with. From day one, users could capture a photo, have Google Photos automatically back it up, and then retrieve it later using search queries based on location data, recognized individuals, or notable elements like pets.
These two functionalities—automatic backup and intelligent search—are fundamental to the app's greatness. They provide the assurance that regardless of the volume of photos taken, any specific image can be found with a simple search.
In 2016, Google enhanced this by introducing automatically generated albums. If you captured numerous photos in a short span or during a trip, Google Photos would recognize this pattern and create a new album compiling all related images. Having used this feature since its release, I can attest to its reliability in grouping trip photos. It allows me to revisit memories, like those from my 2017 holiday album which Google created for me, in mere seconds.
Google further built upon these features in 2017 by integrating sharing tools that employed facial recognition to identify relevant contacts. This meant Google could automatically create an album and then suggest the appropriate people to share it with, streamlining the sharing process.
While there have been many other updates to Google Photos over its lifespan, these examples underscore how Google has positively evolved the application. The highly flexible album structure, combined with powerful search tools and facial recognition technology, has culminated in a service that manages our photos in ways that are both useful and unobtrusive.
Today, Google Photos boasts far more features than it did in 2015, yet its core purpose and functionality have remained steadfast. It's commendable that Google has largely preserved what initially made the app so great, despite some missteps and what some users consider betrayals along the way.
The Turning Point: June 2021 and the Storage Shake-up
Unlimited Photo Storage Was a Powerful Lure
From its launch in 2015, Google Photos offered a compelling proposition: unlimited storage for "High quality" photos (now known as "Storage saver"). These photos could be up to 16MP, with videos up to 1080p resolution. "Original quality" photos, however, were always subject to storage limits.
This attractive offer of unlimited storage for high-quality images was the primary reason many, including myself, initially adopted Google Photos. As someone who isn't a professional photographer and finds many mobile photography advancements somewhat superfluous for my needs, my goal is simple: to revisit memories, like a picture of a dog I saw on a walk in 2018. Unlimited high-quality photo storage was the perfect incentive.
Then, in June 2021, Google retracted its unlimited storage offer, replacing it with a 15GB limit. To exceed this, users now need to subscribe to a Google One plan. It's difficult to view this change as anything but a calculated business decision by Google, allowing users to spend years uploading their memories and then introducing a fee once they were deeply invested and less likely to switch.
2021 marked a significant shift for Google Photos. New features, particularly AI-powered editing tools, are now often exclusive to Google One subscribers, and backups for specific phone folders have transitioned from automatic to opt-in. Despite these changes, the fundamental usability of Google Photos has continued to improve.
What Lies Ahead for Google Photos?
Despite the harsh reduction in free storage, Google Photos has generally improved over time. Its collection of editing tools is excellent for enhancing holiday pictures, and the Memories feature consistently brings forth nostalgic moments, often unexpectedly.
On the horizon, we anticipate a Material 3 Expressive redesign, an entirely new editing suite, and additional AI-powered editing tools. Beyond these, the future evolution of this Android essential is uncertain. Other photo management applications have developed features comparable to Google Photos, and it remains to be seen whether Google's focus on AI will translate into a genuinely superior user experience.
Nevertheless, I remain a satisfied Google Photos user after all these years. Despite some strategic errors and what felt like a betrayal regarding storage, the service, in its core, has evolved for the better.
