Clarification questions:

Is the cost required to be calculated for per person or total cost ? (Total cost annually for Google)

Is this only for phone users using the photos app or storing photos on google cloud? (just phone users using photos app).

 

Equation:

To estimate the cost, we need to know the no. of users * avg photos usage of the user (photos storing habit)*size of an average photo*price per photo storage.

 

No. of users of Google photo app. (comes from mainly android phone users, as default application).

Total no. of population worldwide =7B of which android has 35% marketshare worldwide~ 2.4B.

Assuming atleast 80% of those users use google photo app ~1.9B users.

 

Different kind of users type of photo app-

User Type	% of Users	No. of users	No. of photo clicked/user	Total no. of photos in a year
High users	20%	380M	1000/year	380B photos
Medium users	60%	1.2B	500/year	600B photos
Low users	20%	380M	100/year	380B photos

 

i.e A total of ~1100B photos a year. Assuming a size of 2MB on an avg, the total size of photos= 2200B MB (i.e1T MB)

Assuming the price of storage is $2 for 100 GB (i.e: 100*1000MB), the price for 2200B MB is $44M

Clarifying questions:

 

1. Google photos – an app that syncs automatically to your camera app and uploads photos to Google cloud and reduces the need to store it on your device
2. Cost of 1GB storage $0.002
3. Time storage cost per year

 

 

Equation: 

Cost of storage per year = average cost of storing photos per day x 30 days x 12 months

The average cost of storing photos = # of photos uploaded per day x average size of photos x $0.002/GB

 

# of photos uploaded per day:

 

Photos from developed world + developing world + underdeveloped world.

 

Total world population 7B, 50% have access to the internet. ? 3.5B.

70% of those users use smartphones with camera and the majority of them are android users.  ? 2.1B.

 

Assuming 60% of these are android users ? 1.2B Android devices that have Google photos app

Assuming 40% of iPhone users use google photos ? ~300M iphone users use Google photos app.

 

Thus we have about 1.5B total photos app users.

 

Breaking down the usage of camera and photo upload by the market:

 

1. Developed countries – Assuming users take around 10 photos per day on average with high end cameras. Average photo size 4MB.
2. Developing countries – Assuming users take around 5 photos per day with a medium to high end cameras. Average photo size 4MB
3. Developing countries – Assuming users take around 2 photos per day with a medium to high end cameras. Average photo size 2MB

% of world in developed world ~ 20%

% of world in developing countries ~ 60%

% of world in developing countries ~ 20%

 

Assuming the same distribution holds across smartphones too:

 

Google photos users in  developed world ~ 20% ? 300M

Google photos users in developing countries ~ 60% ? 900M

Google photos users in  developing countries ~ 20% ? 300M

 

The total size of photos stored per year:

 

1. Developed – (300M x 10 photos/day x 4MB x 30 days x 12 months)–> 4.3 x 10^18 Bytes
2. Developing – (900M x 5 photos/day x 4MB x 30 days x 12 months) ? 6.4 x 10^18 bytes
3. Under developed – (300M x 2 photos/day x 2MB x 30 days x 12 months) ? 0.4×10^18 bytes

 

Total storage ~12 x 10^18 bytes –>12 x 10^9 GB

 

Total cost ? 12 x 10^9  x $0.02 ? $24 x 10^7 ? $240M

 

This would be the cost for just one data center, assuming Google has atleast 5 data centres where this data gets replicated, it will be close to 240M x 5 –> $1.2B!

 

1. Clarifying questions:

 

• How does Google Photo work? What is the difference between Google Photo and Google Drive? 

=> Google Photo is the free application for storing photos and videos with limited size.

=> Google Drive is limited within 15GB for free. You have to pay if you want to use more and the size of files in Google Drive is unlimited.

• Which period of time do you want me to estimate? Cost per month or per year?

=> Annually

• Cost for storing in Google Photo? Not closure

=> I know that the price in Google Drive is $2/100 GB/month

=> I assume that the cost of Cloud takes ~10% of revenue => $0.02/GB/year

 

2. Estimation

 

• Result = Number of users x Storage per users x Cost

 

• Number of users:

  • World population ~8 billion => 50% people storing photo => 4 billion

  • 40% of people store offline using hardware, …

  • 60% of people store online => 4×60% = 2.4 billion people

  • Market share of photo/videos online storage

    • Google Photo: 20% => 2.4×20% = 480 million people

    • Google Drive: 10%

    • Dropbox: 20%

    • One Drive: 15%

    • Flickr: 15%

    • Others: 20%

 

• Storage per user:

  • Photo:

    • ~12 albums/year

    • ~1000 photo/albums

    • 0.5Mb-4Mb/photo in Google Photo => 2MB/photo

=> 12x1000x2MB = 48 GB/user/year

• • Video:

    • 10 times per year

    • Original size of videos per year = maximum of typical SD card (16-64Gb => ~32Gb)

    • Compression rate: 10%

=> 10x32x0.1 = 32 GB/user/year

Storage/user/year = 32 + 48 = 80 Gb/year

 

Cost of storing google photos on the photos app = 480 mil x 80 x $0.02 = $768 million