Confirmed: Google Will Launch Google Photos, A Standalone Photo Host With “Unlimited Storage”

Its been rumored for weeks, but consider it mostly official: Google is launching a photo service separate of Google+.

We just heard it straight from the horses mouth while walking the halls of the Moscone Center, though I don’t think we were supposed to hear it just yet. It’ll be announced during Google’s I/O keynote, scheduled to start in an hour.

Here’s what we gleaned:

• It’s called “Google Photos”, and will live at photos.google.com (this url currently points to part of Google+)
• They’re pitching it as having “unlimited storage”. Previous Google photo hosting services (like Picasa) ate into your Gmail/Drive/Google+ storage limits.
• It sounded like photos would be capped at 16MP and will also store video, capped at 1080P.
• A new Photos app is coming to Android; it’s got better photo sorting (with things like day-by-day sorting) and a feature called “Assistant”.

This is, obviously, something that users have been requesting forever: a way to store photos with Google without having to deal with all the social cruft involved with Google+.

More later, as the Google I/O keynote plays out. It’s scheduled to start at 9:30 am pacific; catch our live blog here!

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