14 DAY TRIAL // It may have some catching up to do to compare with Facebook, that is, if it wants to compare with Facebook, but Google+ is making solid and fast progress.
Small updates and new features are only days apart. Bigger updates are quite frequent as well.
Recently, Google has made a simple, but very welcomed change, it's enabling users to download the original photos shared on Google+, as long as the owner approves.
Google doesn't seem to have wanted to allow users to download photos initially. But it was a highly requested feature and it seemed like a strange omission on Google's part.
This, especially since the photos were actually hosted on Picasa Web Albums, where users could download them, if they knew where to look.
There's no way of knowing, looking at Google+ alone, that the photos are actually stored on Picasa.
"We’ve been listening to your feedback and, as of today, you can download full size photos!," Dave Cohen, the Technical Lead of Google+ photos announced.
"When viewing a photo in the lightbox photo viewer, click Actions. If the photo owner has allowed downloads, you will now see an option to Download Photo," he explained.
Users have the option to restrict downloads of full size photos if they want to.
"If you don’t want viewers to download your photos, click the gear icon on the top right corner of this screen, go to Google+ Settings (https://plus.google.com/settings/plus) and uncheck the Allow viewers to download my photos checkbox," Cohen explained.
But there are more features coming. One interesting new feature, that's seems obvious and has been teased by Google as well, is the possibility of adding more media features to Hangouts.
Already, users can watch YouTube videos together, but, in an interview, Google VP Brad Horowitz, who's in charge of Google+, hints that more options, music, movies and so on, could be coming.