HOW GOOGLE COULD TURN ANDROID INTO JUST ANOTHER SUBSCRIPTION

WITH A SMALL CHANGE TO PHOTOS, GOOGLE COULD BE UPENDING THE WAY WE THINK ABOUT ANDROID UPDATES.

- MICHAEL SIMON

At a time when version updates are becoming less of an issue and major phone makers are finally beginning to guarantee years of updates, Google might have found a way to end Android fragmentation once and for all: by turning it into a service.

The signs are there. On February 11, Google announced that several “Pixel-first” features in Google Photos (go.pcworld.com/ px1s)—Portrait Blur, Portrait Light, and Color Pop—won’t actually be coming to all Android phones as expected. Instead, Google is offering them as a benefit to Google One subscribers, effectively putting them behind a paywall along with what Google calls “other new machine learning-powered effects.”

Granted, these aren’t huge features, and most people probably won’t even care whether they have them. Google Photos is a few steps removed from Android. But Google’s decision to put them behind a paywall suggests a shift in how the company will treat future updates to Android apps and the Android system.

THE PIXEL AS A PLATFORM