Google's Offering Free Photo Storage, But At What Cost?

June 04, 2015

Sundar Pichai, senior vice president of Android, Chrome and Apps, speaks during the Google I/O 2015 keynote presentation in San Francisco, Thursday, May 28, 2015. Google I/O 2015 is also where the company unveiled its Photos service. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

For those in the hunt for new ways to organize the critical mass of photos we take in the digital age, Google has unveiled an attractive option: unlimited storage of photos up to 16 mega pixels and videos up to 1080p. For free.

Early reviews praise the ability to scroll through photos by day, month or year and the ease of viewing photos on mobile devices without having to download them first. But above all, people have raved about Photos' ability to search for photos using text.

Say you want to pull up your dog photos. Just search "dog" and Google's technology will analyze your photos and single out all of the ones with dogs. It's not perfect, but it's cool.

Except, the amount of information the company extracts from your photos to do that stirs up questions about privacy — and who else can do the same.

Guest

Hiawatha Bray, tech writer for the Boston Globe. He tweets @GlobeTechLab

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