I use Google photos, primarily because of how friendly it can be cross-platform. It's especially helpful that I can easily build custom albums with just a couple of taps and usher it out to any contact, regardless of whether or not they already have an account set up. Sending invites over text message or any other messaging platform is dead simple. I used to support Apple's shared albums but I haven't been engaged with that platform since I started to use the G Photos app to back up and free storage space on my phone. It also made switching devices relatively painless since I didn't have to worry about 10+ Gb of transfer.

If it didn't feel like Apple was playing catch up with Google Photos, I might've used iCloud more. Also, I hit that 5 Gb threshold very early on.

Mike Elgan wrote a post about this: https://elgan.com/blog/how-to-replace-facebook-with-nicebook

Perhaps Google will quietly sunset their Photos product in the next fiscal year...

Perhaps they will. You better hurry and use this great product before it's gone.

Hopefully given the launch of Google One, someone inside Google is committed to this product set...

Everyone is committed to a product, until they get their level promotion and switch roles.

Funny, in my group of friends (for context 21-24 year olds, NZ) snapchat is used far more than Instagram.

The primary appeal of snapchat is we can very easily send disposable ugly unfiltered often funny vids/images to groups of people. Where as Instagram is more of a social media and is just used for casual content consumption onl

My 20 something friend group has been consistent with snapchat since ~2013

I suspect that unless forced to migrate, or really nasty stuff comes to light, most people will use what they are used to, with the people that are used to doing it with. If a group stabilized on a platform and knows everyone has it and those people and be reached and expect to be reached on it by them, why change? Who wants to be the "hey, let's all just switch to some random new thing" person after you're old enough to be too busy to see most the people all at the same time in real like that often anyways?

Seriously. My friends use it a lot, but even more of my students do. It's rare to find a student who doesn't try to spend the day just snapping candid pictures of others... It's a mess and a half, but they're all over it. Don't see it dying out with that age group anytime soon.

My cohort of late 20s kids switched to insta now that it has stories and disappearing chat too

I have about 10 family members on an Apple Photos shared album, whatever the latest name is. iCloud, probably. Not cross-platform though, obviously.

I’m pretty sure Apple still lets people consult iCloud photo albums through a website.

Yes - but it's a public site for anyone with the link.

Yep, same here. After the latest iOS updates my entire family has been using it a lot more.

I just wish it was cross platform. Seems like a good way to creep people into the Apple ecosystem.

As others have mentioned, Google Photos works pretty well, even on iOS, but I have zero trust that Google will commit to it for more than a year or radically change the functionality.

It's not the same, but you can access Photos from the iCloud.com website.

> will somebody please make a simple private picture app for grown-ups?

WhatsApp? That's how my family uses it.

We use Viber group chat exactly for this purpose

I was a huge user of snapchat, even though my phone (Nexus 5x) was so painfully slow on it that I hated using the app. I got a lot out of it (keep up with actual friends lives, I don't use instagram). After the redesign, it was bad enough to tip me over the edge. I haven't opened it in months, and I miss the friends I kept in touch with it.

It sure sounds like it's dead.

> Snap is currently finalizing its Q4 2018 results and says it expects to report revenue and adjusted EBITDA results “that are slightly favorable to the top end of our previously reported quarterly guidance ranges for each.”

The guidance was a loss between $100 and $75 million for the quarter, so even if they slightly beat that, it’s not doing much to stop the bleeding.

Jesus. A picture sharing app bleeding 100 million a quarter sure sounds like a industry-wide valuation issue.

Glad I bailed on some SNAP interviews a few months back.

They've got a 5 year, $2 billion contract with Google for cloud services. There's $100 million / quarter right there. Plus they have staff.

Yes, servers cost money, but locking in that cost doesn't make sense to me, because it makes it very hard to reduce costs, even if you invest developers in efficiency.

Google Photos has been great for that usage, although it depends what you mean by private..

My GF also uses a private Instagram account for this, but that's even less private than a Google service.

Simple and private, have you considered Signal? End-to-end encrypted and quite a simple UI too, no need for accounts, works well on Android and iOS, etc.

Google Photos?

Yes, this is what you want, unless you hate Google. I stopped using Facebook for photos because I didn't feel safe navigating their privacy settings. Now I know the only people scanning my kids' photos are thousands of only potentially malicious algorithms.

It's great. Automatically adds all the pictures of my son to a shared album.

Instagram rolled out a "close friends" option for sharing stories. That may meet your need.

Check out https://textile.photos (full disclosure, I'm on the team)!

You can email contact@ textile.io for a referral :)

My family uses FamilyAlbum and everyone loves it (cross platform as well).

I've used Cluster and it worked pretty well.

Signal!

What's wrong with using WhatsApp for this? That's what everyone I know does.