Google FINALLY Combines Google+ Photos and Drive Cloud Storage

It’s been a perplexing division. Uploading photos online to services like Google+, you get a bucket of cloud storage to use. Using a service like Drive, you get a bucket of cloud storage to use. Why have these been separate buckets?

Google is finally addressing and rectifying this division. Announced via the Google Drive Blog, now you can open your Drive app on Android and iOS, or jump into a web browser, where you will now find a new menu option for Photos. This also means you’ll have better tools for organizing your photos in folders.

After relying on services like OneDrive and DropBox, it seemed such a simple solution to organize files online, and now Google is finally joining the club.

You can read Google’s full press release below.

Your photos and files, together in Drive

We take all kinds of photos, from pics of friends and family to snapshots of a scenic view. We also use photos for more practical purposes, like planning a wedding, remodeling a kitchen, or capturing meeting notes from a whiteboard. But while you may snap all sorts of images, your experience across Google should be seamless and consistent. That’s why starting today, the photos and videos you keep in Google+ Photos will also be available in Google Drive.

To get started, just look for the new Photos menu in Drive for Android, iOS and the web. From there you’ll be able to manage your photos and videos alongside other types of files. For example, you can now add pictures of wedding venues and cakes to the same Drive folder as your guest list and budget.

Google+ Photos will of course keep helping you store, edit and share your pics. But if you want to organize all your files, all in one place, Drive is here to help. You’ll start seeing your photos in Drive today—immediately if they’re new, and a few weeks for your entire library—so give it a try, and let us know what you think. For more specifics, you can always visit the Help Center.