Google Acquires Odysee

Google may be soon adding more offline and private sharing features to its Google+ Photos service. It had acquired Odysee, an iOS and Android app that let users automatically back up photos and videos taken on their cameras or tablets to their home computers. It also let users set up private, automatic sharing with other people, and it had an API for integrating the service with other apps.

Google might launch Photos as a standalone service, independent of Google+. Adding in options to save photos offline, and more features to better control how you share pictures, are logical additions that would give Google Photos service a more rounded offering, and help differentiate it more from other competing photo services. Others in the crowded space of online photo services include Facebook/Instagram, Yahoo Flickr, Dropbox and many more.

Odysee, which let people log in with Facebook or by creating an account, was an app created by Nimbuz, co-founded by Raghavan Menon and Shiva Javalagi. Both founders have background in Networking, Algorithms, Caching, and Embedded Software. Menon previously co-founded chip designer Ingot Systems, which was acquired by Virage Logic, later acquired by Synopsys.

Odysee keeps copies of recently accessed photos and videos online at high quality. Odysee keeps copies of photos and videos that are unlikely to access online at lower quality similar to that on Instagram or Facebook. It had its own “follower and following network” that was based around the idea of adding a small group of close family and friends who would also be on the app, with the option of sharing more pictures to “non-Odysee users” by way of URL links rather than embeds. It was build around a freemium model free for the first year, and the $5/year thereafter.