{"id":145509,"date":"2019-07-25T20:54:15","date_gmt":"2019-07-25T20:54:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sftarticles.wpenginepowered.com\/en\/?p=145509"},"modified":"2025-07-01T21:38:20","modified_gmt":"2025-07-02T04:38:20","slug":"google-photos-go","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/google-photos-go\/","title":{"rendered":"Google Photos now has over 1 billion users and a new younger sibling"},"content":{"rendered":"

Google Photos is one of the best, if not the best photo organizing program out there<\/a>. Add that it is free and that it comes pre-loaded on every Android device and you might think that having 1 billion users isn\u2019t that big of a deal. It wasn\u2019t that long ago that Google Chrome logged its 5 billionth download<\/a> after all.<\/p>\n

The truth is though, that Google Photos\u2019 success was a given as it was originally designed to bolster Google\u2019s ill-fated social network Google+. An unmitigated failure, that risible misstep is no more, with Google having pulled the plug earlier this year. Photos, however, is here to stay and it could be argued it has seamlessly facilitated our shift towards a world where we take photos first and ask questions later.<\/p>\n

Photos becomes one of 9 Google apps to have over 1 billion users<\/h5>\n

\"Google<\/p>\n

Reaching one billion downloads is a big deal then but, unsurprisingly, this isn\u2019t Google\u2019s first rodeo. Photos is actually the ninth<\/strong> Google product to clock such a huge number of active users.<\/p>\n

The other 8 Google products to make it to the 1 billion club are Android, Chrome, Gmail, Google Drive, Google Maps, the Google Play Store, YouTube, and Google Search. Even with failures like Google+<\/a> in\u00a0 recent memory, clearly, Google knows a thing or two about internet success.<\/p>\n

Despite its connection to a doomed product, however, and even in such lofty company as its Google products brothers and sisters, Photos has managed to show itself to be something quite special indeed.<\/p>\n

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One marker for its success is the speed of its uptake. Photos first hit the scene around four years ago in 2015. It took only five months before Photos had 100 million users and had reached 500 million just a year and a half later.<\/p>\n

Fast Company has pointed out<\/a> just how quickly Photos has been adopted by so many people: \u201cGmail took a dozen years to hit a billion users; Facebook and Instagram, about eight years apiece.\u201d Google Photos hit the 1 billion user mark in half<\/em> the time it took Facebook and Instagram to do the same.<\/p>\n

The Photos team doesn\u2019t seem content with that rapid rate of expansion either. They want more users and they want them as quickly as possible. Photos has had and still has a fast but steady uptake of new users. It had 500 million users after two years and 1 billion after four. You\u2019d expect 2 billion users in eight years then, but that number might rise quicker due to the latest announcement from the Photos team.<\/p>\n

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Guide to Google Photos<\/p>\r\n Read Now \u25ba<\/a>\r\n <\/div>\r\n <\/div>\r\n <\/a>\r\n <\/div>\r\n<\/div>\n

Google has launched Gallery Go, a new lightweight and offline version of Photos<\/h2>\n

Yesterday, the Google Photos team announced the release of Gallery Go<\/a>. Gallery Go joins the ranks of Google other \u201cGo\u201d apps, designed for owners of smartphones with more modest feature sets<\/a>. If your phone doesn\u2019t have a lot of processing power or RAM, and your connection speeds or data package is limited, you\u2019ll likely have some of Google\u2019s Go apps on your phone.<\/p>\n

These apps include Gmail Go, YouTube Go, Maps Go, and Files Go and there is now a Go alternative for Photos. Launched at Google for Nigeria<\/a>, Gallery Go is designed to work offline meaning Gallery Go photos aren\u2019t automatically backed up to the cloud. Gallery Go still uses Google\u2019s machine learning algorithms, however, to automatically organize photos, but it only does so with the photos that are stored on the phone locally or on an SD card.<\/p>\n

Image via: Google Keyword<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As well as offline machine learning algorithms, Gallery Go is also able to pack in some simple editing tools. The Google blog post on the launch of Gallery Go describes them like this, \u201cWith Gallery Go it’s easy to get great looking photos in just a few taps. [You can] Use auto enhance\u2026 for instant fixes. You can also choose from a variety of filters to get a new look, and easily rotate and crop, so your photo looks just right.\u201d<\/p>\n

Often these basic editing tools are all you need, so putting them into the lighter version of Photos means a lot more people will have access to the photo editing tools they need.<\/p>\n

Image via: Google Keyword<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Perhaps the most impressive thing about Gallery Go, and indeed all of the Google Go apps, is its size. Google has managed to squeeze in offline AI algorithms, a sleek photo library, and photo-editing tools into a package of only 10 MB.<\/p>\n

As well as working well on less powerful smartphones, Gallery Go is also designed to not take up much hard drive space as often these less powerful phones only have 4 GB of space, if not even less. This is why it also important that Gallery Go works with photos stored on SD cards too.<\/p>\n

Launching Gallery Go in Nigeria gives a good indication of what the Photos\u2019 team plan is. With Photos being a powerful app that works best when it is always connected to the internet, it has alienated huge swathes of Android users around the world. Most Android users have more modest handsets and limited access to the internet. Gallery Go puts the power of Photos in their hands.<\/p>\n

If Gallery Go can catch on in places like Nigeria, other countries in Africa, and across the continents of South America and Asia, there is a good chance the Photos team will notch up its 2 billionth user in much quicker time than it took to get to 1 billion.<\/p>\n

Gallery Go is available now on the Google Play store and will work on all Android devices running Android 8.1 (Oreo) or higher.<\/p>\n

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Photos becomes one of 9 Google apps to have over 1 billion users and the Photos team has just launched Gallery Go to offer their services to owners of more modest devices.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9073,"featured_media":145512,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","wpcf-pageviews":0},"categories":[1015],"tags":[2488,1068,1064,1710,2170],"usertag":[],"vertical":[],"content-category":[],"class_list":["post-145509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-app-subdomain-redirectiongoogle-photos","tag-google","tag-google-photos","tag-photo-editing-apps","tag-photography"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9073"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145509"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145509\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":325656,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145509\/revisions\/325656"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/145512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145509"},{"taxonomy":"usertag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/usertag?post=145509"},{"taxonomy":"vertical","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/vertical?post=145509"},{"taxonomy":"content-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/content-category?post=145509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}