While Google Photos is probably one of the best ways to be able to digitally manage and store your photos, it is also trying to position itself as a photo printing service so the best ones from your collection can be physically printed. Now it looks like they’re testing out a new monthly subscription service where they will choose your “best memories” every month from the last 30 days of photos and prints them out for you for memory keeping or for gifts.
The Google Photos print subscription is currently on a trial basis in the U.S., according to 9 to 5 Google. If you’re one of the lucky few, you’ll see a banner to join saying “You’re invited to the monthly photo prints trial” at the top of the web version of Google Photos. The service will send you 10 photos every month that will be chosen from those you uploaded from the past 30 days. You’ll get the photos printed on a 4×6 cardstock with a 1/8-inch border.
You can choose from among three themes per month: “Mostly people and pets”, “Mostly landscapes”, and A little bit of everything”. All are pretty self-explanatory, with the last one being a mix of all your “best moments” from your photos. They’re using an automatic process using Google Photo’s smart algorithm but you can also edit the photos before they’re printed. We don’t know yet if edit means you can replace some of the photos or you can just adjust brightness, color, etc.
It’s not the first time of course that they’ve offered printing services. This is just an expansion of their Print store which has been offering softcover and hardcover photo albums since 2017. More recently, they’ve also added canvas prints options. This is an “interesting recurring revenue model” for them for those who want to gift or keep these prints.
The trial is rolling out to selected users in the U.S. who will have to pay $7.99 per month to get their 10 photos every month. Let’s see if this service will gain any traction and if they will be expanding it to more users soon.
