Google Photos Adds a Chat Feature To Its App

Google is rolling out a way to directly message photos and chat with another user or users within the Google Photos app. From a report: The addition will allow users to quickly and easily share those one-off photos or videos with another person, instead of taking additional steps to build a shared album. The feature itself is simple to use. After selecting a photo and tapping share, you can now choose a new option "Send in Google Photos." You can then tap on the icon of your most frequent contacts or search for a user by name, phone number of email. The recipient will need a Google account to receive the photos, however, because they'll need to sign-in to view the conversation. That may limit the feature to some extent, as not everyone is a Google user. But with now a billion some Google Photos users out there, it's likely that more of the people you want to share will have an account, rather than not.

Because Google needs Yet Another Chat app

[Hadlock]

I've stopped using google products outside of search, docs and gmail at this point. If it's not explicitly offered by their enterprise products team, it's not worth using, then watching it disappear three years later.

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[twocows]

You're missing a few... off the top of my head, Sheets (Excel), Slides (PowerPoint), Drive, Calendar, and Keep (sticky notes) are also all G Suite products that are available to standard users. Of those, the main ones I use personally are Keep and Drive.

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[dmt0]

Yeah, that chat feature worked great in Youtube

8chan replacement

[BrainJunkie]

Surprised to see Google jump into the fray to soak up displaced 8chan users.

But why?

[jawtheshark]

Why? A photo app doesn't need that. Just have a talk and and agreement with Apple and agree upon a common protocol so that Android users can seamlessly communicate with Apple iMessage users, add in desktop & web compatibility and you have a winner. Especially if it's an open protocol.

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[110010001000]

Open protocols have been soundly rejected by the tech companies.

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[jawtheshark]

I know. It's sad.

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[fred6666]

Just have a talk and and agreement with Apple and agree upon a common protocol

The common protocol already exists. It's called XMPP. Apple decided not to use it. Google also seems to be phasing it out.
iMessage is clearly not the way to go. It's still based on legacy phone numbers, which are owned by carriers. Therefore it should not be used.

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[jawtheshark]

I know about XMPP. Hell even Facebook used it for its messenger... and then stopped it.

Jabber/XMPP

[DrYak]

There used to be such an inter-operable protocole : XMPP/Jabber.

It used to be the backbone of Goolge Talk (Or whatever was their "attemp at a chat" du jour back then).

But then Google decided to stop interoperating with everyone.

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[jawtheshark]

I know about XMPP. Even Facebook used to use it.

You are mistaken about iMessage forcing you to have a phone number. I accidentally set it to send from my iTunes account.

I did not say it must *be* iMessage. I said it must be *interoperable* with iMessage. Big difference.

Google Photos

[mschoolbus]

I heard Google Photos will be the next text messaging app.. :D

Thank god another social app

[hoggoth]

I can't count how many times I've saved my photos on Google Photos and thought, 'If only there were a way to initiate a chat with someone right now to talk about this photo I just uploaded.'. I healed my misery by going into my PDF viewer and making a connection over my PDF viewer's built in social app -- this is not a joke, my PDF viewer has a F*!^@#^ social sharing feature with a separate social media network for sharing PDFs... wtf?

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

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[twocows]

Yeah, that was incredibly irritating. Drive used to be like a central hub for all your files in Google's ecosystem... now it's disconnected from a major component.

you don't need a camera or a 'photo app'

[swell]

I live near a place popular with tourists from around the world. In this place there are certain locations that are great for photos. One in particular gets photographed 100+ times a day. People are often lined up to take this photo. Families come and each member takes the same photo.

If you search the internet you will find millions of copies of the same picture. Some are much better than any picture you are likely to get. You want the Eiffel Tower, the London Bridge, the Great Wall; just use the internet.

Really?

[nospam007]

"Google is rolling out a way to directly message photos and chat with another user or users within the Google Photos app. "

I never chat in my backup programs.

How long is this one going to last?

[fintux]

I'm mostly waiting when this one will make an appearance at https://killedbygoogle.com/ [killedbygoogle.com]. They just killed the YouTube Messages three months ago, and they already have killed numerous other chat applications as well, so I cannot really see why this would be any different from those. I don't expect this to last for too long...