Google is reportedly in the process of adding a new section to the Google Photos app called ‘My Week’ that lets people share memories and photos with a small group of family and friends.
My Week is a social feature that Google is working on for Photos, and the premise is that you and all your close friends and family members can share photos through the app, kind of like a week-long Instagram Story.
However, that idea isn’t new and appears to have been copied almost one-for-one from another app called Retro. The photo-sharing app’s whole premise is to have a weeklong journal of photos that you share with a smaller group of friends than you’d typically have on Instagram or TikTok.
It’s also still unclear if this feature will launch in its current form. It’s not actually live yet and was uncovered by Android Authority in two separate app teardowns. TechCrunch reached out to Google to ask about the similarities, but the company only mentioned that My Week is being tested internally and is currently in an invite-only stage. This means that the feature is more likely to launch than not, in my opinion, but it could still never see the light of day because of this very controversy.
wow pic.twitter.com/nu2Gdt1QKr
— Ryan Olson (@ryanolsonk) July 13, 2024
Retro’s co-founders are trying not to be angry since this is still in testing, and they hope it will change before launch, according to an interview they did with TechCrunch.
They also expect that a lot of users enjoy the simplicity of the Retro app, so the idea of this being buried in Google Photos might not appeal to many users.
Overall, this is an interesting case of sherlocking, and it’s interesting to see Google doing it instead of Apple this time around. Sherlocking is a term used to describe a situation where a big tech company releases a feature or app that’s similar to a third-party app, effectively making that app redundant.
Source: TechCrunch, Android Authority
Image Source: Android Authority
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