Gadgetory

this episode of Android Weekly is brought to you by domain.com Google photos is it just a great new service that uploads all your photos and videos for free or is it a maniacal ploy to deprive you of your privacy and steal your data maybe a little phone so what is Google photos and what is it not the service allows you to automatically upload all your photos and videos to the cloud for free and without a limit on storage with a couple of limitations photos cannot be bigger than 16 megapixels they'll be automatically downscaled if they are and videos must be 1080p resolution or lower Google photos is available as an app on Android and iOS or you can use it through your web browser and provides you with a single location for all your photos that's accessible from all your devices there are a lot of services trying to solve the same problem but Google photos has some major advantages over the competition it's free unlimited and really good at organizing your photos making them searchable and curating them that means you can search by location by date by event or by using a variety of keywords for example type beach into the search box and you'll see all your photos with a beach in them the photos assistant also creates highlight videos and gifts for you to share taking the pain out of editing things together by yourself this isn't a new idea but as with so many things Google is a little better at doing it than most of the competition now you've probably heard the adage if you are not paying for the product then you are the product and this is true in the case here yes Google is an advertising company that's how they make most of their money but more specifically they are a search advertising company and that means that to be effective they need to know as much about you their searcher as possible so that they can deliver to you relevant ads and Google is exceptionally good at doing that I can't remember a time in the past two years where I've done a search and I haven't gotten relevant ads I mean ads that I actually care about and for Google to do that they need to know as much about you as possible so they give us these great free products I mean who gives you better free products that Google but they come at a price they take our data and they use it to advertise to us so Simon Hill who is the author of this article will tell you that it really comes down to whether or not we trust Google with our data Google is going to know where you took these photos who you took these photos with and what you were doing in those photos do you trust Google to do whatever they want with this data because the legalese says that they basically can do whatever they want with those photos so do you trust them a product like Google photos falls under the Google's Terms of Service that means that when you upload your photos you are having the tech giant license to host store reproduce modify create derivative works communicate publish publicly perform publicly display and distribute those photos there you go Google believes that they can basically do anything they want with these photos now I don't think the question is do you trust to Google the only real answer to that is you can trust Google to be a for-profit corporation if they can get away with it legally and from a public PR perspective they're going to do it the question is are we web savvy enough are we just privacy savvy enough to be conscious about what we put online I'm going camping in a couple weeks with my family I don't think there's anything that you know I would post or upload to my private file that if were hacked I wouldn't want distribute or I wouldn't be able to accept being distributed but let's be clear there are photos that I would not want to be shared publicly so I am NOT going to risk putting them in my Google Drive account which could be mistakenly in this place or copied by someone else or I could get hacked so I'm just not going to upload those I'm going to share those very very privately and just be conscious and careful about those things this idea that you can not use Google photos and that's somehow going to protect your privacy is you know be lying the fact that if you're using any Google products they also know a lot about you already so just a reminder I'm still looking for the very best Android related dot-com domain name in the comments below and the one I like will get one of these t-shirts no matter where you are if you're in I don't know punch Gunny India I am sending you a t-shirt if you're in San sebastián Spain I am sending you one of these puppies because the dot-com matters why because no domain name extension tells your story with the same level of trust as a.com or.net domain name dot-com and dotnet domain name extensions and Jack credibility into your online presence and who doesn't want more credibility you can save 15% on domain name and web hosting when you use our coupon code Android at domain.com check out don't forget 15% off when you use our coupon code Android when you think domain names think domain.com thanks for watching guys love to connect with you right here on Google+ or Twitter I will be watching the comments below for all your Android related domain names and I will try and choose the very best domain name on Sundays or Monday mornings Android weekly so come up with your submissions by then to get t-shirt don't forget about my brothers in Android we're trying to be your source for all things Android check them out