Google Acquires Odysee Backup and Sharing App for Photos and Videos

Google is on a shopping spree, as the Mountain View giant has acquired its second app maker this month - Odysee. Notably, the search giant acquired the app maker Launchpad Toys last week. The acquisition was announced as a notification to Odysee app users, and also as an announcement on the firm's website homepage.

Odysee, an app formerly available for Android and iOS, provides automatic photo/video backup from mobile devices to personal computers, apart from private sharing features . The app also provides API to integrate other apps with the service.

While the exact terms and details of acquisition are not yet known, Odysee has announced that its team will be joining Google+. The details on the team's specific job are still unknown. However, it is quite probable the app firm will be working on further improving the photo service of Google+. It is also being speculated that the acquisition will help Google separate its photo service from Google+, as rumoured since last year.

It is worth mentioning that the Odysee app from the Google Play and App Store has already been removed and the service will shut down completely on February 23, as per the website homepage. While the company is not accepting any new users, the current Odysee users will be able to access and download their saved photos and videos in archive form after the shutdown.

We are excited to share that the Odysee Platform Team will be joining the Google+ Team.

Odysee's vision was to be the easiest way for everyone to capture unlimited memories and access them everywhere. We are very excited to join Google where we'll continue to focus on building amazing products that people love.

Our deepest thanks to every one of our users. To help you with the transition, the Odysee service will continue till Feb 23rd and soon after that all your photos and videos will be available as a downloadable archive.

Odysee was developed by Nimbuz Inc, which was co-founded by Raghavan Menon and Shiva Jalagi. As TechCrunch notes, both founders have experience in the fields of algorithms, caching, embedded software, and networking. The Odysee service differentiates itself from competitors by offering the option to intelligently make photos and videos available at their full quality, based on likelihood of user access. It also provides offline access to some of the media using a caching process.

The Odysee acquisition by Google makes more sense if we take into consideration the last year's Bloomberg report, which stated that Google is planning to give its Photos service a more independent role, and will allow non-Google+ users to access the photo service.

With the acquisition, Google seems to aggressively push its own social network, Google+ against the likes of Facebook, Flickr, and Instagram. However, the company has not yet received the required traction by Google+ users.