
Google is taking a page out of Facebook's manual and presenting users with nostalgic flashbacks from photos uploaded over time.
Google Photos, the search company’s photo and video sharing application, has announced a new feature to help draw in new and existing users. According to a report from Tech Crunch, the company has been encouraging users to upload old photos from their thumb drives, CDs, DVDs, and even undeveloped film so that they can present their latest creation.
Google Photos plans to sort through millions of photos and present them as animations or stories with effects included. Google’s web assistant will alert users when a photo presentation is available with a notification, and users can take a brief moment out of their day to reflect and indulge in some high-quality nostalgia.
According to Product Lead for Google Photos Search Chris Perry, the new toy will be called “Rediscover This Day.” It brings photos from years past back to the top of users’ feeds, and will be available for both Android and iOS applications.
Users will remember this concept from Facebook’s memories or Timehop, but the new iteration won’t bother you unless it can draw from a voluntarily uploaded collection of photos big enough to keep things interesting.
According to Perry, “Visual quality of photos are taken into account. No screenshots. We’ll look at photos taken over a longer timespan, something that was more of an ‘event.’ Something that’s going to emotionally resonate. We look at the presence of landmarks. Those get promoted to collages. People is a strong signal that we’ll use to help remind you.”
Google’s powerful sorting algorithms will ensure that photos are displayed because they might be interesting, and not simply because they were taken a year ago. As Google angles to be the photo storing service of choice for millions of users, we may begin to see more fun features coming from the company’s Photos department.
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