Google + Photo + Android =?

Here's how one of Google’s interesting features, Google +, the well-known Googler and, concurrently, the main evangelist of this project, Vic Gundotra:

Anyone who has copied photos from a phone at least once knows that this is rather tiring. Therefore, many do not even try to do this. But after all, photographs are needed in order to share them, and not just be stored on a memory card! Therefore, we have developed a function * that will create a closed album in the cloud, accessible to all your devices, and will automatically upload your photos to it. You can easily share them at any time.

_{* Only Android users can use this feature for now. The application is not yet available in the Russian Market, but you can download it, for example, here .}

Some who have tried the application have already appreciated this opportunity. Others, including some well-known bloggers - do not appreciate. Meanwhile, the thing is actually interesting and deserves close examination.
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It would seem that Spout is right: all sorts of ways to shuffle content from a mobile phone even existed long before the iPhone era, and now, in the era of the slowly emerging real mobile Internet and ubiquitous wifi, what self-respecting geek copies something somewhere to shuffle?

What is the point? Why does Vick write about this as something new? Just a PR move? Not really.

The keyword in the description of the sharing of content through the Google Plus application is automatic . The application does not wait until it is called (directly or through the share menu) to post a photo. It does it right away as the photo is taken, or how it will find the wifi, if you set the option.

This process looks like this:
- We take pictures.
- In general, without going into the photo album we go to Googleplus (at least on a PC, at least in the application on Android).
- It is already there. Look / publish.

That is, in the perspective of a good mobile Internet - and Google is always trying for the future - the user does not need to know that his photo is somewhere on the phone. It flies straight from the lens to the Google cloud. This is what Vick meant, excluding the “copying” link from this process. He did not say “before you copied the lace, but now you will copy using the Internet thanks to GooglePlus”, as Spout interpreted inadvertently. He said "you will not copy at all." Instead of “sfotkali - copied from the phone to the Internet - opened access” it turns out “sfotkali - opened access”. Or not opened.

Here is how the publication of photos with available photos from the phone looks like:



Around the camera icon appears a list of recent photos that have been posted, but not touched. And pay attention to the item "Download from the phone." The meaning of this inscription is not interpreted as “Download from the phone’s memory to Google Plus,” because the pictures that appear when you click on this item are automatically downloaded to Google Plus. The inscription has a different meaning: “Download cloudy indefinite content from your phone into something more specific - a photo album or post” . It turns out that Google wants to teach users to think about their phone as a device directly generating content in Google’s services. And not as about something alien, from where it is necessary to “share” later.

The very android application Googleplus while positioned as a photo album. All these photos posted earlier in the cloud are invited to be viewed there, directly from the Internet, and not from the local gallery.



Having a G + application on another device (phone, tablet), and having access to the desired circle with these photos, we can view them in the gallery exactly the same as on our memory card. Or through the browser on the site. The most classic cloud-based approach to content storage in relation to mobile devices.

But ... All this we have already heard somewhere, and most recently, right? Right. In summary, I would say that to some extent, Google Plus is the beginning of the answer to Apple iCloud.