[MUSIC PLAYING]
LAURENCE MORONEY: Hey, everybody.
Hope you're still enjoying I/O. Today I'm
going to be chatting within Anil, who's the head of Photos.
And he showed us this really cool photo stuff
during the keynote.
So Anil, welcome to "Coffee with a Googler."
ANIL SABHARWA: Thank you, Laurence.
It's great to be here.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Thanks for coming.
Now one of the things that you were talking about
was really taking control of your digital life,
taking control of your photos.
ANIL SABHARWA: Absolutely.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Can you tell us all about that?
ANIL SABHARWA: Yeah, for sure.
It's really funny.
I often say to people, it's 2015.
We have cars that drive themselves.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Yes, we do.
ANIL SABHARWA: We've got drones delivering packages.
But if I want to store or find my photos, share 20 of them
with you, it's the unsolved problem of our time.
And so when we talk about taking back
control of your digital lives, it's
really about how we're in this information overload.
And we're with Photos really trying
to do what Gmail did for email-- really
make it just easy for you to be able to not have
to worry about your photos.
Have peace of mind that they're safely backed up
and you can access then whenever you want.
Make it really easy to be able to find that photo so you don't
have to scroll forever, and be able to make really
great moments, and then obviously be able to share them
really easily.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Sure.
And it gives you this home for photos, right?
So instead of some photos being on this device
and I forgot to back these ones up and I backed those ones up,
it's this one single repository where I can keep all my photos.
ANIL SABHARWA: Exactly.
And we want to make it such that you can pick up any device
and you can have access to all of your photos instantly there.
You don't have to worry about, oh is that one on my iPhone,
or is that one on my Android, or is
that one on my home computer?
You just have your entire life of memories on any device
that you pick up and go into the Google Photos app.
LAURENCE MORONEY: OK.
Now one of the things you were showing today
was just how easy it is to share these photos.
And people don't need a different app
to get into them or a permissions link.
How does all that work?
ANIL SABHARWA: So we want to make sharing really easy.
And I have this with my wife all the time.
So, you know, she takes a bunch of photos of the kids.
I take a bunch of photos of the kids.
And we're trying to exchange photos because we all
want to hold on to them.
We all want them together.
And normally you have to share them in some way
or with some app, and then you download and then you reupload.
And so with Google Photos, we said, let's just
make it really simple.
So we make it so you can just select all of the photos really
easily, say Grab a Link.
You can send that link to anyone.
It's a really secure link.
But anyone who has it can get access to the photos
and see that content.
And they can just tap one button,
and all of those photos and videos
are immediately copied into their libraries.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Nice.
Nice.
Now do they need to have a Google
ID at least to be able to sign in to get that storage?
ANIL SABHARWA: If they want to be able to copy those photos
and videos into their library, then they
need a Google Photos library, which means they just
need a standard Google account.
But if they want to just view the contents-- so
if I want to take the photos and I want to share them
to, you know, my kids' grandparents
and I want them to be able to just access it,
I don't have to worry about it.
I can just send it over SMS even.
They can click on the link.
And immediately they'll just see all the beautiful photos
and videos.
LAURENCE MORONEY: That's really cool.
And if I'm a Google Drive user, I
can see all of this in my Google Drive, right?
ANIL SABHARWA: Exactly.
And that's why we wanted to make sure between Drive and Photos,
it doesn't matter which door you come into,
ultimately it's your photos and videos.
You should have them accessible in either place.
So photos you put in Drive can show up in Photos,
and photos that are in Google Photos are available to you
in Google Drive.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Right.
And I have 15 gigabytes of storage in Drive,
but I don't need to worry about all those gigabytes
and pictures because it's unlimited.
ANIL SABHARWA: Yeah.
Well, so we have essentially two different ways
that you can store content.
If you care really deeply about the original bytes--
you want to have the last bytes down to the very, very
last ones and you want to make sure
that you can backup raw files that are 30 megapixels or 4K
video, then we have our traditional plans where you can
pay $10 a month for a terabyte.
It's still some of the cheapest storage on the planet.
You get 15 gigabytes for free across all your Google
services, and that continues.
But as we were talking to people and we realized the challenges
in this taking back control of your digital lives,
is we take so many photos and videos.
And most mobile devices are less than 16 megapixels
in terms of the cameras they take.
Almost all the videos people are producing are 1080p.
And we thought, what if we could take these photos and videos
that these people are creating and let
them have peace of mind?
We can back them up unlimited for free.
And so that's why we created this ability now
to back up a lifetime of memories unlimited for free--
under 16 megapixels for photos, 1080p for HD videos.
And then we use compression to maintain a near identical
visual quality.
LAURENCE MORONEY: But you showed that picture of the penguins,
right?
And that was a compressed picture.
ANIL SABHARWA: Yeah.
LAURENCE MORONEY: And there was still just beautiful fidelity
in it, right?
ANIL SABHARWA: Absolutely.
And we have some examples where we go
and we zoom in at like four levels of detail and really
in there to the exact same levels--
and we really try to make it such
that it's indiscernible to the human eye,
because our goal-- and that's why we figure out
the right things based on the right photos
and we do different techniques, is because we really
want this to-- you want comfort that if this
is the only copy of that photo you have,
we want you to feel incredibly comfortable and with peace
of mind that you can always have access to that photo
and it's a good enough high quality photo.
You can print it.
You can share it.
And it's just like the memory that you remember
and just like the photo you took.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Yeah.
Now my daughter is in love with penguins.
She absolutely loves penguins.
And when I was looking at that picture,
I was thinking you were going to have to send her that picture.
But she's one of these people-- she's a teenager.
And lots of teenagers, they'll take out their cell phone
and they'll take picture, picture, picture, picture,
picture, picture, right?
ANIL SABHARWA: Absolutely.
LAURENCE MORONEY: She'll take 10 selfies of herself,
and then she'll pick the right selfie.
And then she doesn't like the others.
Are we doing anything for that overwhelming amount
of pictures?
ANIL SABHARWA: Yeah.
I mean, we have just scratched the surface of all the things
we need to do with Photos.
We're pretty excited about these three key ideas.
We think there's more that we can
do to help you easily and safely back up your life of memories.
We think we want to make sure it's even easier to be
able to find and organize.
What you're describing is very much in that category
about, make it easy for me to hold on to just one of the 10.
And how about when I share with my wife,
make it really easy for us to be able to put
those photos in a single place.
There's a lot of really great opportunities here.
And so we're just getting started in Photos.
We've got a lot to do.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Oh.
An I mean, you've done so much.
One thing really piqued my curiosity this morning.
So you were showing this thing that
had faces of your relatives.
And you picked your niece, I believe it was.
And then it showed pictures of her all the way down to a baby.
But how did it understand that the baby is the same person,
because the face is different, right?
ANIL SABHARWA: Yeah.
So we auto-organize your library by the people, places,
and things that matter.
So in my particular case, it was very much
my wife, my two kids, the mother-in-law,
the father-in-law, the brothers and sisters,
et cetera, friends.
And in the case of the niece, what we do is we
group faces that are similar typically within a few years
of an age group.
So for example, in her case, we would have likely
done something from when she was baby to being very young
and then something in her middle toddler age, eight, nine
years old.
And then now when, you know, she's 10 to 15 years old.
And what we do is we get high levels of confidence
on those groupings.
But then what we can do is based on some really great, amazing
computer vision is we can calculate feature and distance
vectors around how people naturally age.
And we can start looking at these three groups
and we can look at the progression
that someone has had.
And we can say, you know what, the similarities here-- when
you apply the way people start to age--
actually make these things look like they're really, really
close.
And we can bring these three neighboring clusters together
in a single one and say, hey, this is actually the same face.
And because we're doing this 100% private for your eyes
only, it's also really easy for you to go in and say, hey,
you know what Google Photos, you made a mistake.
These four people, that's a different baby.
And so we try to do the best that we can,
but we acknowledge that every now
and then we're not going to do it right.
But we make it really easy for you to tell us and then
still curate those results in the right way.
LAURENCE MORONEY: We're running low on time,
but there's one last question I've got to ask.
And that was the mountain biking thing,
the videos that you showed.
That was hours of videos, right?
But how was it able to take those hours of videos
and turn them into that one exciting moment,
including you taking the tumble?
ANIL SABHARWA: Yeah.
I wish it left that part out, by the way.
LAURENCE MORONEY: No, I love it.
We're going to to keep it in.
ANIL SABHARWA: So what we do with our movies is when people
upload lots of videos, we find that no one really consumes
them, because you typically get a great three to four
second moment, but you often capture minutes of video.
In that example, I captured multiple hours of GoPro footage
when you're mountain biking.
And you upload it because you're like,
oh, maybe there's a nugget in here,
but honestly I never would have got back to it.
And so what Google Photos did for me is it
analyzed that content.
It looked for what the best shots
are based on the composition, the lighting.
It looked for faces.
It looked for motion.
And it gave me particular clips.
And it was able to stitch that together automatically.
Now it's a starting point.
I can go in and edit it.
I can say, you know what, I don't want these three clips,
I want to add these, or I want to change the theme
or soundtrack.
It gives me some options.
But it's a great starting point.
We used some really great technology
to put that together.
LAURENCE MORONEY: And it just created a nice little story
for you, right?
ANIL SABHARWA: Exactly.
And that's a moment.
And then I would share that, right?
I was never going to share four hours of GoPro footage of me
mountain biking [INAUDIBLE].
LAURENCE MORONEY: [INAUDIBLE] some people would love
to watch it, but [INAUDIBLE].
ANIL SABHARWA: You're too kind.
I don't think they would.
But, yes.
LAURENCE MORONEY: So thank you so much, Anil.
That was fabulous.
And the new Google Photos, it's available to download now
for iOS and Android.
So go check it out.
ANIL SABHARWA: And it's also on the web-- photos.google.com.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Also on the web.
So I can actually take my old photos
and upload them on the web?
ANIL SABHARWA: Absolutely.
Right now.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Sweet.
photos.google.com.
And it's available for Android and iOS.
Thank you so much.
ANIL SABHARWA: Thanks, Laurence.
I appreciate the time.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Thank you.
Cheers.