Google+ Jumps into Photo Sharing
June 12, 2012
No doubt inspired by Flickr and Instagram, Google is doing a “me too!” in the photo sharing space. VentureBeat announces that “Google+ Wants to Be Your New Flickr.” Innovation, is thy name imitation? I guess it doesn’t matter, as long as the profits roll in.
At the recent two-day Google+ Photographers Conference in San Francisco, V.P. of Product for Google+ Bradley Horowitz expressed some strong opinions on the place of images in our online future. Specifically, he wants to maximize the metadata associated with any photo, down to the position of the camera, lens optics, even physiological information about the hand that holds the camera. Though that sounds a little Orwellian, the point is to capture as much detail behind each memory as possible. That’s sweet. Right?
Naturally, the purview of photo sharing applications is what happens to the image after it is taken.
Horowitz looks forward to the day when image storage, transfer, and manipulation are all easy and seamless. The article notes:
“Eventually Google aims to blur the line between the device and the cloud, so all the data you generate is automatically backed up, archived, and secured in a nice non-obtrusive manner. Automating this synthesizing stage would free up time for photographers to focus on the more enjoyable process of manipulating the data.
“Horowitz wants to increase the power of its own post-processing tools, making image editors scalable so that an amateur can use them as easily as a professional photographer. Replacing the very segmented image editing market and creating a tool that is equal parts Instagram, Lightroom, and Photoshop is an especially ambitious (perhaps naive) idea.”
So it is. Can Google achieve this lofty goal? Perhaps. The company has surprised us before.
Cynthia Murrell, June 12, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
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