One of the reasons why I think Google Photos is pushing out this functionality is that these new AI-generated variations count toward your overall storage.

So hey, you take a selfie, 3 MB. And now you want your selfie to show yourself posing in front of the Eiffel Tower, the Statue of Liberty, the Great Wall of China, and the Grand Canyon. OK, now you've added an additional 12 MB.

Do that often enough, and you'll have to buy another block of Google One storage, which is MRR for Google.

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speedgoose 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Sure, the company of the "I don’t know how to count that low" meme cares about 12MB.

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ethmarks 2 days ago | parent [-]

Of course they don't. But if even a small percentage of their userbase uses this on even a small percentage of their photos, that amounts to a massive amount of storage. It doesn't cost Google very much to store all those images, but those users will have to pay for more storage. Even thought it isn't significant to Google when a single person does it, it becomes highly significant when millions of people do it.

	▲	rlpb 2 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		A million people adding 12MB each would be 12TB in increased storage sales. Is that really significant in increased profit if you set it off against the cost of providing the storage, the computational cost of generating 12TB of images, plus the salaries of the developers to write and then maintain this feature? I think it's more likely that they're doing it because they think it makes their product better, increasing sales that way instead.
	▲	thorncorona 2 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		This line of reasoning doesn’t make sense because 3MB is marginal for the amount of work put in to develop this feature. Google photos offers a save as copy / save as original feature when editing photos and videos. Removing the save as original button would be cheaper and significantly more effective.

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UncleMeat 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I don't think it needs to be this complicated.

Every product at Google is being pressured intensely to put AI everywhere. The focus is on velocity, not well thought out product experiences. This sort of photo editing interaction is not novel so it doesn't require a ton of out of the box thinking to decide to add it to Photos.

Google is worried that other companies are going to steal their lunch and their approach is to try to throw every AI feature they can into their products as fast as possible.

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netdur 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I upgraded to 2TB of storage since 15GB just wasn’t cutting it. Two years later, I’m already at a whopping 200GB!

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loco5niner 2 days ago | parent [-]

similar on the 2TB, but at 500GB. Having toddlers will do that. I'm trying to capture so much.

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marcuschong 2 days ago | parent [-]

Same here. 10mo old. Funny thing is I have barely revisited the photos and videos, due to lack of time.

	▲	loco5niner 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Ha! Me either. The plan is to collect them now, enjoy them later. Not even deleting the bad pics like I would usually do.

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trickster2020 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Nope - its so they can sell you ads - it learns about your interests based on your prompts. That marginally increased storage space won't make much of a dent.

	▲	Bayko 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		It's possible for two things to be true at the same time