A few days ago it was announced that the Photos portion of Google+ was going to be shut down on August 1st in favour of its spin-off app, Google Photos. Apparently there has been a bit of backlash to the announcement with people apparently concerned about losing Photos functionality in Google+, enough that head of Google Photos Anil Sabharwal has needed to come out and clarify some changes coming with Google Photos. In a statement made on his Google+ page, Sabharwal says:
“1. The great photo and video sharing service that’s part of Google+ is unaffected. You can continue to post photos and videos, and your followers will be able to comment and +1 as before. No change.
2. All of the photos, videos, and albums you have already shared on Google+, including their posts, comments, and +1s are also unaffected. An easy way to find these is to visit the Photos tab of your Profile page.
3. The private photo management component of Google+, which includes backup, editing, creations, private album management (album management for shared content is still available on Google+), and sharing to other apps, is being replaced by Google Photos.
I sincerely appreciate for many of you #3 is still a hard pill to swallow. And I promise we don’t take decisions like this one lightly. The reality is that maintaining both Google+ Photos (the private photo management component of Google+) and Google Photos poses several challenges. Most notably, it is confusing to users why we have two offerings that virtually do the same thing, and it means our team needs to divide its focus rather than working on building a single, great user experience. “
It does look like everything should continue business as usual after August 1st, but then again I don’t use the Photos functionality in Google+ enough to know its nuances too well. Is anyone still concerned about these changes? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
Source: Google+ via TalkAndroid
