It didn’t last long. Less than a week after Dropbox and Twitter announced new photo oriented features, the other major players responded. Loud and clear.

Google bets on Email

First Google. Today, it announced a tighter integration of its very popular Gmail with it’s  photo backup solution Google Photo album. Now, it will be even easier to attached photos to any email directly from  your drive account. One click easy. Since email is still the most used online communication tool – that is changing too*-, making photos exchange a more intricate part of its feature set makes perfect sense for a company that wants to dominate the photo sharing universe. But that’s not all. On the same day it is offering Google Glasses for those who can’t wait, it is also adding the possibility to photo chat. Using Hangout, a Google Glass user can exchange photos directly with another user, from one frame to another and receive a photo as a reply. New killer app ? No more need for text, just pictures to pictures. Finally, at least for now, it has also updated photo management in it’s glasses, organizing photos in daily bundles for easier  retrieval. Take that Dropbox and Twitter.

Amazon wants in

But Google is not the only one. Already competing with Dropbox in the cloud space, Amazon also just announced major improvements to its Amazon Cloud offering ( for iOS only, for now). Besides offering free 5 Gb space to all users, it has greatly upgraded it’s navigation, allowing for a much smoother organizing, search and retrieval process of photos. While on the verge of launching it’s own cell phone with an announced 13 MP camera – on a customized version of android – it is clear that Amazon wants to capture all the photo market and not just the one using its cell phone ( which might be a bust).

Amazon Cloud Drive new interface
Amazon Cloud Drive new interface

We have not seen the last of this battle of giants for the photo space. Yahoo, with its still strong Flickr, could surprise us soon, as well as Facebook, whose empire was built on photo sharing. Microsoft, in the midst of redefining itself, should not be far behind, since it is heavily pushing it’s own photo centric cell phone from the Nokia series.

Flickr forges ahead

Update (added 4/17/14): Exactly 24 hours after we posted this article, Yahoo just announced a revamped mobile app with enhance search, object recognition, and ability to capture 30 seconds video. Besides the obvious move towards giving Flickr a much need search dusting – a boost to its archival offering- one key and important differentiator is the seemingly powerful object recognition.  Able to recognize about 1,000 different objects – animals too-, it automatically creates searchable tags even if those tags were not originally created by the uploader. This is the important because it is the first step to monetization of images. There is only one step from recognising objects in photographs to adding commercially relevant information on top of it, like what brand, how much it costs and where to buy it.

Clearly Yahoo/Flickr is not only fighting hard to stay relevant in the photo/tech space, but they are now taking the lead in offering new features that while maybe not so important to users, will become instrumental in turning their 10 billion images into hard cash.

DropBox is apparently not finished throwing rocks in the pound. Today, it just announced the acquisition of Loom, an important player in the photo archive space. While projects are to shut down the service, it’s ability to keep full res copies of photos in the cloud while delivering smaller size to the phone will certainly be quickly integrated in Carousel.

Who wins ?

The winners, for now, are the users who are being showered with features and more and more free storage space in exchange for their participation. However, once a clear winner emerges, one that controls the pipelines of the digital photo vertical, life might not be so enjoyable.

 

*it is estimated that by 2016, there will be as many social media profiles as email accounts, 4.3 billion.

Author: Paul Melcher

Paul Melcher is a highly influential and visionary leader in visual tech, with 20+ years of experience in licensing, tech innovation, and entrepreneurship. He is the Managing Director of MelcherSystem and has held executive roles at Corbis, Stipple, and more. Melcher received a Digital Media Licensing Association Award and is a board member of Plus Coalition, Clippn, and Anthology, and has been named among the “100 most influential individuals in American photography”

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