But when presented with a vast volume of photographs, Auto Awesome and Stories really shine. Our 24,000 photos date back over a decade, back to when we got our first digital camera in 2000. Google gradually worked its way through our photo library, creating animations and stories year after year, and in the process bringing up moments I had forgotten about and photos I hadn’t looked at in years.
- Dylan Tweney for VentureBeat

I am still in love with Google Photos, and Auto Awesome is a big reason for that. I like being surprised by the app when it surfaces something like this from the day before.

It’s a silly GIF, but it makes my wife smile, and that’s worth quite a bit. It also seems smart enough to recognize events and alerted me to a “story” it had made about our wedding day back in 2009.

I see some people dismiss these sorts of features and say that they could just as easily do this with the files they have on their computer or on Dropbox. I disagree wholeheartedly. This stuff is as close to magic as consumer tech gets right now, and people are going to eat it up.

Apple will likely unveil something new for iCloud Photo Library at WWDC this week, but unless it has magical features like Auto Awesome, I don’t know how interested I am going to be in it.