Skip to main content

Google offers fully-automated (but basic) digital photo albums & movies

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26A6-RO5MoI]

If you’ve ever been on a trip, taken tons of photos and then done nothing with them afterwards, or shot a bunch of video that is still just sitting on your phone, Google has launched a couple of new services aimed at you: Google+ Stories and Google+ Movies.

No more sifting through photos for your best shots, racking your brain for the sights you saw, or letting your videos collect virtual dust. We’ll just gift you a story after you get home. This way you can relive your favorite moments, share them with others, and remember why you traveled in the first place.

Stories will be available this week on Android and the web, with iOS coming soon …

To use the services, you need to be automatically backing-up your photos and videos to Google. Google will then notify you when a new Story or Movie is available.

Note that photos are backed-up at full size by default, which will soon hit the limits of your free storage. Change to Standard size to avoid this – Google offers unlimited storage at up to 2048 pixels on the longest edge, which is good enough for online viewing.

From the examples shown on Google’s blog post, don’t expect too much. The digital albums in particular are very crude bar the full-bleed title pages – the rest, to be honest, looks like something a kid knocked up in Microsoft Paint. But this is a first-generation product: the concept is certainly cool, and if they can teach the software some design skills, it could develop into something worthwhile.

FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.

You’re reading 9to5Google — experts who break news about Google and its surrounding ecosystem, day after day. Be sure to check out our homepage for all the latest news, and follow 9to5Google on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to stay in the loop. Don’t know where to start? Check out our exclusive stories, reviews, how-tos, and subscribe to our YouTube channel