What is the name of Google's photo backup and sharing service?

Google's photo backup and sharing service is Google Photos. It stores photos and videos in the cloud, makes them available across devices, and provides tools for organizing, searching, editing, and sharing them.

Google announced Google Photos in May 2015 as a standalone service spun out of Google+. It replaced the former photo features associated with Google’s social network and offered dedicated Android, iOS, and web experiences. Users can create shared albums, generate links for other people, and browse automatically organized collections.

Machine learning is central to the service. Google Photos can identify broad subjects such as animals, food, buildings, and beaches; group similar faces where that feature is available; recognize landmarks; and surface “Memories” from earlier dates. Google Lens is also integrated for some visual-search and text-recognition tasks.

One important change concerns storage. Google originally promoted unlimited storage in its compressed “High quality” mode, but new uploads began counting toward the user’s storage quota on June 1, 2021. That quota is shared across Google Photos, Gmail, and Google Drive. iCloud Photos, Flickr, and Instagram provide overlapping photo features, but they are separate services.