Search public images in Google Photos

Question

On Picasa Web Album, I can search all public photos via the explore features, for instance a search by tag: https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/view?feat=tags&psc=G&filter=0&tags=wikimania

(Note, Google is hiding such features more and more in an attempt to force people to use other services. If at some point in the URL gets redirected elsewhere, see how it looks currently.)

How do I do the same on Google Photos? https://photos.google.com/search/wikimania only finds my own photos with the word.

Google Plus doesn't provide a side access either: https://plus.google.com/s/wikimania/photos only finds (very few) posts with photos, while I only want the photos themselves and all of them.

There are other questions about searching posts and searching own photos. I also asked elswewhere how to mark and search Creative Commons images.

Answer 1

Short answer

At this time Google Photos doesn't include a feature for searching public photos and searching only photos in Google+ isn't not available at this time.

Explanation

Google Photos, Google Plus Photos and Picasa Web Albums are three different services. They could have some similar features but not all are the same. I.E. Albums created in Google+ or Picasa Web Albums could be find in Google Photos, but Google Photos search doesn't include a searching of photos shared by other publicly.

Google announcements

AFAIK Google didn't announce yet any plan regarding the retirement of Picasa Web Albums. Actually, they removed the automatically redirection from http://picasaweb.google.com to http://plus.google.com/photos but now, the last automatically redirects to http://photos.google.com.

It's worth to say that Google+ Photos will be shut down, starting on August 1st, 2015.

Alternatives

• Use https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/view?q=soccer just replace soccer by the your search terms.
• Use http://images.google.com

Remarks

AFAIK Picasa Web Albums search engine and Google Images don't use the same index nor algorithms.

References

• Photos Help
• How Google Photos is different from Google+ Photos - Photos Help
• Create, find, & edit photo albums - Photos Help
• Goodbye Google+ Photos, hello +Google Photos by Google+ page on Google+
• Share a photo or video - Google+ Help

Answer 2

All your photos, organized, and easy to find ^source

Google Photos is currently for your own photos. Your options are basically to use Picasa Web Albums Search, Google+ Search or Google Images Search.

Answer 3

Just use Google Image Search: https://www.google.com/imghp

Answer 4

http://picasaweb.google.com/data/entry/api/user/example@gmail.com?alt=json

just replace example@gmail.com with any gmail address and a page will load with with links to the public photos and albums of that person. Just open second last link and there will all the public albums of photos shared by that gmail address.