Surprised the parent's downvoted - it's as close to the truth as anything else.

Like a lot of Google products, Photos has a lot of forebears. Picasa was one of them, as was Google+ (IIRC, the Picasa team was folded into Google+ when Larry refocused the company on Social in 2011). Sounds like Bump was also aquihired into it, and I think there was also a lot of cross-pollination between Image Search, Research, and Google Photos around some of the search & content recognition features.

It's the best app from the last few years. It's radically simple: snap a photo and (by default) it only gets uploaded when you are on WiFi. Later, you'll get a notification that it used AI to find the best pictures of the dozens you took and and assembled a photo album with them.

You'll get notifications telling you that you had an important event a year ago and can see the most relevant photo from that day.

It creates then and now photos, so I can see how my kids have changed from exactly a year or exactly five years ago.

It automatically shares my photos of the kids with my wife.

All this happens without any interaction other than snapping photos freely. For a busy parent, this can't be understated.

Compared to Facebook, I don't have to put up with the noise. And, it only shares with a very limited set of people.

Of course "it" does now know my kids'names. It's pretty amazing and scary to see how it knows my infant daughter's face is the same one as she has four years later. I'm not sure I would see the similarly if she weren't my own.

Lightweight interactions with powerful AI and massive processing power behind it makes for an incredible app. The reviews are not lying.