[josefresco]

I wonder if the comment about "selling our users" is a swipe at Yahoo!, Google (https://www.google.com/photos/about/), or both.

Does anyone have data on how Google Photos generates revenue? Is it just a mechanism to upsell Google Drive storage quotas? Or are they also mining the photo meta data?

[icebraining]

"The information gleaned from analyzing these photos does not travel outside of this product — not today. But if I thought we could return immense value to the users based on this data I'm sure we would consider doing that. For instance, if it were possible for Google Photos to figure out that I have a Tesla, and Tesla wanted to alert me to a recall, that would be a service that we would consider offering, with appropriate controls and disclosure to the user."

-- Bradley Horowitz, Google VP of Streams, Photos, and Sharing (2015)

So yes, using info from the photos is definitively on the table. But I doubt they made Photos with a specific income stream in mind; they want to know everything about everything and everyone. The possibilities (for monetization and much more) are tremendously higher when you can leverage the connections between datasets, even if they are kinda lame by themselves.

[josefresco]

"if it were possible for Google Photos to figure out that I have a Tesla, and Tesla wanted to alert me to a recall, that would be a service that we would consider offering"

That sounds terrible. He attempts to soften it by using an example that seems very important/critical (a vehicle "recall") instead of saying something like "If Google Photos can tell you like Starbucks and Startbucks wanted to show ads to you, that would be a service that we would consider offering"