Finding a specific photo from an entire gallery can be tricky, but luckily, there are some features that help speed up the process. For example, when you take a photo with the Google Photos app, location data is automatically recorded and faces in the images are tagged – making it much easier to quickly find what you’re looking for. Even without geo-tagging, though, the Google Photos app does its best to estimate where an image was taken using a variety of tricks. However, Google is now changing how this works behind the scenes.
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If you choose not to allow the Camera app to save photos with location data, Google Photos will attempt to estimate location either by recognizing visible landmarks in the images or by using Location History collected in the background (this is an optional setting for Google Accounts only). This latter option is specifically designed to help Maps use your location data more appropriately and provide better recommendations .
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Google has announced that the Photos app will no longer use Location History data to estimate where specific photos were taken. If you have the Estimate missing locations setting enabled in Photos, Google will now rely solely on landmarks to determine the location of your images. This change is rolling out gradually, and over the coming months, Photos may ask you to keep or delete existing location estimates associated with images. For accurate image locations, we recommend enabling the setting through the Camera app on device .
If you don't remove or keep location data associated with your photos by May 1, 2023, Google will automatically delete all estimated locations. However, your memories will remain untouched. It's important to note that this deletion only affects photo location data, not Location History data.
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The company plans to use only landmark recognition from photos to estimate their location, which appears to be part of Google Lens’. Recently, the Photos app began testing an image search button that works in a similar way. While this may be part of a larger leap forward, location estimation could get worse because most people don’t often take photos with recognizable landmarks fully or partially in the frame.
Information source: androidpolice.com
