Google already has more than 1 billion users in eight applications, and recently its photo management application, Google Photos, became the ninth “super app” to achieve this milestone.
Editor’s note: This article is from “Tencent Technology” “Silicon Valley Cover” section author: Deer, authorized reprint.
Focus on focus
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Google already has more than 1 billion users in eight applications, and recently its photo management application, Google Photos, became the ninth “super app” to achieve this milestone.
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Google Photos was a derivative of Google+ Google+, and it’s been a lot of years away from other tools for storing, organizing, and sharing photos, but with the help of Google’s AI, search, and cloud storage technologies.
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Google Photos doesn’t have Google’s traditional data-centric business model, but it has two sources of revenue: users can pay for additional storage or printing of albums.
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Any loyal Google Photos user will be more deeply attracted to Google’s ecosystem, which is a great boon for the company itself, helping to launch products such as the Nest Home Max smart screen.
In the tech industry that is obsessed with scale, nothing is more exciting than creating products that reach 1 billion users. And no company has achieved this goal more often than Google, and the company has eight products that have reached this enviable milestone, including Android, Chrome, Gmail, Google Drive, Google Maps, Google Play, YouTube, and the same name. search engine. Now, Google is welcoming the ninth “super app”, the photo management application Google Photos, whose users have broken the threshold of 1 billion people in just 4 years. In view of this, who can say that Google’s innovative genes have melted?
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In fact, Google Photos has achieved this goal as early as the beginning of this summer, four years after its debut at the Google IO Developers Conference in May 2015. In contrast, Gmail took more than a decade to attract 1 billion users, Facebook andInstagram has been used for about eight years. This makes the growth of Google Photos not only impressive, but also very fast.
This app definitely has some factors that are good for it. Google Photos is pre-installed on Android phones, and this powerful ecosystem allows it to appear in front of a large number of new users. Google Photos can also be used on the web as one of Google’s best iPhone and iPad apps. And it offers unlimited free storage, as long as you agree to use Google’s optimization algorithms to compress your photos and videos, making it one of the most attractive free gifts on the web.
Photo: Anil Sabharwal, Google’s vice president of Google Photos creation
Despite this, the success of Google Photos is not meant to be. The app is a derivative of Google’s social network Google+, which was once committed to fighting for dominance with Facebook. When it was first launched, Google Photos was many years behind other tools for storing, organizing, and sharing photos. Google even has another tool, Picasa, which acquired Picasa at the same time that Flickr took off in 2004. Even now, Google Photos is usually not the default photo app on Android phones: for example, Samsung’s Galaxy models emphasize their own Gallery photo app.
Anil Sabharwal, Google’s vice president of Google Photos, believes that there are several factors to its success. In 2015, when Google launched Google Photos, it coincided with the launch of a service that used artificial intelligence (AI) for billions of photos stored in the cloud. The company has also built a number of things that users can trust and can take good care of their image. Sabaval said: “We have this crazy sense of responsibility, because these are the most important memories of people.”
Maybe, thanks to any other Google product in recent years, Google Photos has benefited from the company doing everything right. For the services that Google+ hosts, it feels like a little miracle.
From application to HangoutGo to Google Photos
Sabavar grew up in Montreal, earned a degree in mathematics from the University of Waterloo, and eventually moved to Sydney. In the summer of 2008, when Google tried to recruit him, most of his career was spent in startups. At first, the idea of working in a big company didn’t affect him: “I said to myself, this may not be the place I want to go.”
It turns out that Google has a spirit of perseverance, and Sabavar finally joined the company in January 2009. He was involved in the development of Google Apps (now known as G Suite) and helped build many of Google’s first real-life iOS and Android apps. After four years at Google, he moved to the company’s most important project at the time: social network Google+.
At first, Sabavar was responsible for the video call feature of Google+, Hangout. Six months later, he turned to the photo sharing feature of the service. They have recently received an impressive AI implant upgrade, but Sabaval concludes that his primary responsibility is to answer a question about existence: exactly, what should Google+Photos be?
He concluded that this would require defining a three-pronged task. He explained: “We need to solve an unsolved and obvious problem for the end user.” It must be something that can take advantage of Google, and the company must treat the user experience as seriously as the underlying technology.
According to any objective criteria, Google+’s photo features are more streamlined and more advanced than Facebook’s features. Facebook’s photo features, which have been in use since 2010, are only plain in addition to facial recognition. It doesn’t matter, if everyone you want to share photos on other social networks, then even the best photo sharing tools don’t make much sense.
Sabaval did not attempt to improve the existing way of sharing photos, but instead became interested in another task, simply managing them, whether you want others to see them. In the era of smartphones, managing photos has become an increasingly difficult task. He used to say: “We used to use 24 frames of film and took up to 24 photos. Now, even if you are facing the restaurant food, you have to take 24 photos.” People with a large collection of images need to be safe and private in one place. Store them, they also need help finding the mostImportant photo tool.
With its core competencies in AI, search and cloud storage, Google is well positioned to compete for photo galleries. This challenge also satisfies the unresolved issue of authorization in Sabavar. Facebook’s own photo sharing features and Instagram are socially focused. Apple’s photo features for iPhone, iPad and Mac are private, but they exist in the company’s “walled garden”. At the time, they were relatively simple. At Yahoo, Flickr has only recently begun to wake up from a long sleep.
Sabavar’s exploration of what Google+Photos should be is a clear conclusion: it shouldn’t be part of Google+. Instead, he believes that Google Photos can be used independently as a photo app, first to help people save, organize and enjoy their own images, and second to share them with others.
Figure: Gallery Go is a Google Photos Lite that is suitable for the basics of the developing world market
At that time, Google+ founding director Vic Gundotra had left the company. Sabaval has perfected his new vision with two other Google+ leaders, Bradley Horowitz and Dave Besbris. But when he stated his reasons to Sundar Pichai, the key moment came.
At the time, Pichay was only the product director of the company, not the CEO. After Sabavar introduced his plan at a review meeting, Pichai said: “It is indeed, this is the product we should develop. Of course, he firmly believes that machine learning and AI are the future of Google. He said, this is us. Areas that need to be involved.” Sabavar first worked with Picay on Google Apps a few years ago.
Most of the Google employees in the Sabaval team believe that it makes sense to give up the Google+ ship. Among them is David Lieb, who has launched a private photo sharing app called Flock before his startup Bump was acquired by Google. Lieb is now a producer of Google PhotosDirector of the product, he said: “The opportunities we see in the social sharing field do not seem to be the real problems people face, it is more like a better version of what people are already doing.”
Not everyone has seen a new direction. Sabaval said that skeptics believe that the divestiture of Google Photos deprives Google+ of its key competitive advantage in the battle against Facebook. He said: “We have a lot of people who choose to leave the team. But I am very convinced that ‘this is where the bus is going.’ I need you to either get on the bus or get off.”
Sabavar has an unusual degree of freedom to drive a bus when he thinks it is appropriate. Although his title at the time was a Google Photos director, it was not particularly advanced, but Google gave him broad responsibility for projects across products, design, and engineering. He said: “At my level, it is very unusual to get involved in the entire company’s business.” Usually, if the product and engineering team need to report to someone at the same time, that person needs to reach the senior vice president level.
The fact that Google Photos can re-use the features built for Google+ can help. Lieb said: “In the process, the team actually developed a lot of very good basic technology, these technologies are also suitable for private photo management, such as automatic backup.” Google+ also provides the basis for Google Photos AI auxiliary search function, these It’s incredible that features can find specific people, places, and photos related to concepts such as “garden” or “airplane”.
But Google can’t turn Google+Photos into a standalone app like this, and then rush out of the house. For example, Sabaval said: “If I take a photo of a receipt, I am unlikely to use it on social networks. But in the gallery, it is the first photo at the top, which is often very important.” Users tend to accept The fact that social applications like Google+ require strong Internet access to work. If an unstable connection prevents them from seeing their own photo library, they won’t be so tolerant.
Although it takes time to resolve the details, the team members of Sabavar believe they know what the user wants. Leslie Ikemoto, who was originally responsible for the iOS photo app and now head of machine intelligence, said: “For a variety of reasons, many of us eventually manage our family’s photo collection and conduct them. Backup. So I think, we understand the pain of users to some extent.” But their wishes far exceed the limits of basic functions, they believe that today’s edge case will become the mainstream essentials of tomorrow.
Libu explained: “We decided to let us solve all the problems we started to face, weThe rest of the world will begin to face these problems in the next few years.
Figure: Google Photos’ Smart Assist is designed to do a lot of heavy work to control photos
Google Photos’ Smart Assist uses AI to proactively perform a range of tasks, from creating collages and mini-movies to finding photos you might want to delete, and it’s becoming an iconic feature of Google Photos. It originated from Liebu’s illusion, giving users the feeling that they were cloned and working full time on photo management. As Sabaval remembers Lieb had asked: “If I can take you, you can shrink your size and put you in your mobile phone, what will happen?”
One thing the Google Photos team didn’t do for their creativity was to develop a business model that would make it a “money tree.” Sabaval pointed out two sources of income: users can pay for additional storage or printing of photo albums. Most importantly, any loyal Google Photos user will be more deeply attracted to Google’s ecosystem, which is a boon for the company itself, helping to launch products such as the Nest Home Max smart screen.
However, Google shuns a profitable opportunity that may suddenly appear in the minds of many people. This is what Google needs to do: dig data from photos, show it targeted ads, or otherwise Monetize users. This is a particularly sensitive topic considering the privacy of the service. Sabawar stressed: “From the beginning, we have absolutely no plans to do any advertising related to those content, because they are very private and private moments.”
Figure: Google Photos emphasizes a number of useful and important features, such as preventing the library from taking up too much storage space
The clock ticks
At first, Google hopes at the end of 2014Previously launched Google Photos, but the routine schedule delay delayed the goal to the beginning of 2015. Sabaval recalled: “After a well-received presentation at the board meeting, Eric Schmidt pulled me aside and said, ‘What can I help?’ Very feasible.”
The only problem is that Pichai’s enthusiasm for Google Photos is so high that he wants it to be one of the key announcements at the Google IO Developers Conference in May. This means delaying the release for a few months, which is a kind of delayed satisfaction that sounds like Sabavar can’t stand it. He recalled: “I said, don’t do this. In the past nine months, I have been madly pushing this team forward. We are ready to release, they all want to release. If I postpone this timetable, the team Not satisfied with me.”
Pichai did not waver, but he did agree to defend Sabavar’s report personally. Sabaval said: “He walked in front of the entire team and said: ‘Listen, what you build is really amazing. This is a good example of using machine learning to solve a very important problem for our end users. Please believe me, we will launch this product at the IO conference. After that, you will thank me.””
In a keynote speech at Google’s IO conference on May 28th, Sabavar and Lieb appeared on the stage to introduce Google Photos, they took a selfie and showed you what you can do with this service. News reports and initial comments were positive and sometimes dizzying. Google’s new products are not always the case, and many media say the app is “magical,” “glorious,” and “essential.”
More importantly, consumers accepted Google Photos on the scale that the company wanted. In the first five months, its monthly users reached 100 million. On the first anniversary of the launch of the app, Google announced that the number of users has reached 200 million. A year later, this number became 500 million.
Google has been keeping users growing with stable new features. Many of them involve sharing photos, but they are smarter and more intimate than anything on Facebook. For example, a partner account allows you to automatically share photos of specific people with your confidant. Sabaval said: “I am sitting here, my cell phone will sizzle, because my wife took a picture of our children in Australia.” This is his only favorite Google Photos feature.
The next “super app”
After four years of Google Photos, Sababal is proud that its original vision is not only popular with consumers. It turns out to be a lasting way to get everyone on the team moving in the same direction. Sabavar repeats him at 2The mantra in the 015 keynote speech in 015 said: “If you walk through the Google Photos building, you will say, ‘Hey, what do we do?’ Everyone will say to you: ‘We are the home of all your photos, organized Let them live so that you can save and share important things.'” He added that the clarity of the task “helps us make decisions. It helps us break the connection.”
The effectiveness of the Google Photos case also supports Sabavar’s career. After working at the Googleplex in Mountain View for five years, he returned to Sydney, where he now manages Chrome and Chrome OS. He also spent 18 months supervising communications products such as Google Fi and Duo. Although Google Photos is still under his authority, he has handed over day-to-day supervision to general manager Shimrit Ben-Yair. Ben-Yar is a veteran who has worked at Google for 10 years and has worked on YouTube and other projects in the past.
Ben-Yal, Lieb, and others who are responsible for Google Photos still have a long to-do list. Lieb said: “When we first started doing this, I and others started writing the specifications for Google Photos. It turns out that it is like a 50-page document, all the things we want to build. Now we are Here, after four years of release, we are still completing some of the things on the first list. And in the process, we have doubled or doubled the list of required features.”
However, the most direct news of the Google Photos team is not an upgrade to this app. At an event called “Google Services for Nigeria,” the company announced the launch of Gallery Go, a streamlined brother product designed for Android Go, designed for consumers in developing markets.
Like Android Go itself, Gallery Go is designed to run smoothly on low-cost phones that may not have access to high-speed data. It omits the advanced smart assistant features and is more focused on photo viewing, the necessary editing tools, and automatic enhancements. Leslie Ikemoto, head of Google’s machine intelligence, said: “You have to think carefully about memory and how to manage network usage. All of these things are engineering. From an engineering point of view, this is super interesting.” /p>
Of course, the ultimate goal of this new application is to achieve greater growth. Sabaval said: “We have crossed this truly critical milestone, with 1 billion users per month, and Gallery Go is our attempt to the next 1 billion users.” Sabaval admitted that people’s desire to save and share photos is generalAll over. Even though it now requires two applications to express it, the original vision of Google Photos is far from reaching its limits.