Update: And Google Photos is available! Go try it out for yourself right now.
Announced today at Google IO, Google Photos is a free photo storage, sharing and editing service that essentially combines the functions of Google Drive images and Google+.
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While that may sound like Facebook's geotagging feature, it's not. Google Photos will recognize faces and familiar places, grouping them intelligently instead of by the location in which you took the photo.
During the keynote, Google had two examples of this - a snow storm in the midwest and a baseball game the presenter had attended previously. Photos automatically placed the visually similar images in one group without tags or manual direction.
What this means is that you'll no longer need to create albums for trips or manually sort every picture that has you and your spouse together. Google will do the heavy lifting.
Basic photo editing software will come built into the service, and once you share a series of images the recipient will be able to directly add them to their library with a few clicks. The company insists that these new groups are "for your eyes only," however, and will never share the photos with others without your approval.
Also new is the ability to drag and highlight photos to select more than one photo at a time, and all users will have the added benefit of automatic backup and syncing with Google Drive.
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