Remember when Google built a special, stand-alone messaging/sharing experience into YouTube only to kill it 2 years later? They are making that same play today within Google Photos.

Google Photos is getting an update that allows you to have private conversations within the app that you can share photos and videos through. You can comment, like, save, and continue adding photos to these conversations over time, giving you an ongoing chat with family and friends about your visual life.

You’ll access these by tapping the share button in a photo that then brings up a list of those conversations you have going. I’m assuming there will be another way to constantly get into these conversations without tapping that button too, we just don’t know yet as the update is slowly rolling out over the next week.

Is this a good idea as another Google messaging service? Well, we know the history there with Google and messaging services, but I can’t say I hate this. I share a lot of photos directly within Google Photos to family already, so this should help organize that better, allow everyone in these shares to chit chat a bit, etc.

Anyone got the countdown clock start for when this feature is retired?

// Google