Google Takes On Apple With Free Unlimited Storage Photo App

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) -- It's the moment Googleheads have long been waiting for: a standalone Google photo service that offers unlimited storage of images and videos for free, along with some fun new tricks.

At Google's I/O Keynote in San Francisco Thursday, Google Product Manager Anil Sabharwal said the new service "Google Photos" will help organize media content up to 16 megapixels and 1080p resolution and automatically sort them into groups.

Currently Apple only provides 5GB of free iCloud storage.

Google has long been able to use image recognition to automatically tag the contents of pictures for search results, but now it's much more integrated into Photos.  Over time, Google Photos can recognize frequently photographed people, enabling you to tap on a person's face to search for other pictures of that person in your collection.

Users have long been requesting a new way to store photos with Google without the hoopla of Google+, their version of social media, which the company has been trying to distant themselves from recently.

Now users can bypasses Google+ altogether to access a myriad of options for panoramas, slideshows and funky effects. And perhaps best of all, the media won't eat up your Gmail/Google Drive storage limits.

People chimed in on social media over the unveiling.

At least one person jokingly referred to Dropbox, the online storage system, as a relic.

Others flaunted Google Photos as superior to Flickr's capabilities, which often require a third-party app.

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