Google+ iOS app gets full resolution photo and video backups in iOS 7, new notification tray
Google has updated its Google+ app for iOS with a full-resolution backups of photo and video, a new design for the notification tray, and the ability to share your location.
Context & Ripple Effects
This update extends Google's 2013 push to make Google+ feel native on Apple devices rather than a web wrapper: after the card-based mobile Web redesign in May 2013 brought cover photos and larger tap targets to phones and tablets, and the dedicated iPad app arrived in July 2012, Google is now deepening the iOS client itself with full-resolution photo and video backups, a redesigned notification tray, and location sharing.
The pickup was unusually broad for an app point release — Engadget, The Verge, 9to5Mac, SlashGear, TechnoBuffalo and Softpedia all covered it the same week — which says less about the feature list than about how closely Apple-ecosystem watchers were tracking Google's attempts to win iPhone homescreen real estate.
First-order effects
- iPhone users can now back up their camera roll at full resolution through Google+ rather than compressed uploads, making the app a genuine storage destination instead of just a feed reader.
- The new notification tray and location sharing give Google two more surfaces inside its iOS app to drive return visits and check-ins on a network whose engagement it has been redesigning toward all year.
Second-order effects
- Full-resolution backup on a rival's phone puts Google's storage infrastructure in direct competition with whatever Apple offers natively on iOS, raising the stakes for default-backup behavior on the platform.
- Rival social apps face pressure to match auto-backup as a table-stakes feature, since a user who has months of photos mirrored into one network faces real switching costs against another.
Third-order effects
- If auto-backup becomes the primary reason people keep the app installed, the personal media library — not the social graph — becomes the retention asset, which could eventually decouple photo storage products from the social network that seeded them.
- For platform owners like Apple, third-party apps quietly accumulating users' entire camera rolls sharpen the question of who controls the default backup relationship on iOS.
The trend: Mobile social apps are evolving from content feeds into background backup services, using automatic photo and video syncing as the durable lock-in mechanism on competitors' platforms.