The value of Google's automated processing of images can't be understated. Last year I uploaded roughly 50,000 photos to Google, which was every photo I had taken since 2006. Google automatically created albums for every vacation I'd gone on in that time, plus many of the major events. Weddings, concerts, etc, were all identified.

Also the face search is probably the most brilliant piece of it. I began meticulously tagging photos in Lightroom a few years ago, and had probably 15-20% of my photos tagged with location and people in the photo. It was a pain in the ass and took forever to get to that point.

Meanwhile it took less than a week to upload everything to Google Photos, and now I can search through over 10 years of photos by person. You can also search by event, object, location, etc ("coachella," "sailboat," or "haiti" as examples).