Yesterday’s Google I/O keynote unveiled some new features in Music, Maps and Search. But to me the biggest and most important announcement was the new Google+ photo features. Full-size high-resolution photos, automatic highlights of entire albums, automatic enhancement and auto-awesome combine to make Google+ the most feature packed photo hosting service on the web. Add the ability to share pictures with anyone via e-mail (take that Facebook) and Google+ is now the best social network to host and share photos.
Why is this important? It encroaches directly on Facebook’s bread and butter, sharing pictures. Take a look at the statistics. As of May 2013 Facebook hosts 240 billion photos and averages roughly 350 million photo uploads per day. This implies (and my limited anecdotal evidence supports) that most Facebook users view the site as a photo sharing service. If Google can gain mindshare as the premiere social network for sharing photos you may see a large defection users from Facebook.