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Google Photos for iOS gets Mother's Day movie feature, three days after Mother's Day

Google Photos for iOS gets Mother's Day movie feature, three days after Mother's Day

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Google hosted its I/O developer’s conference today during which it announced additional features for its Photos app, virtual assistant, and Android O. A lot of these things were cool, but what was most befuddling throughout the event was the company’s continued focus on Mother’s Day. Does Google know when Mother’s Day is? Today, the company rolled out an update to its iOS Photos app that specifically highlights a Mother’s Day movie-making feature. See here:

As a reminder, Mother’s Day was this past Sunday, May 14th. To be fair to Google, this movie-making feature debuted before the holiday, but at the time, videos could only be compiled from the desktop app and then subsequently edited through the app. Now they can be made on the app. Still, this is hyper-specific UI for a holiday that comes around once a year.

I wouldn’t have thought much of this strange holiday update timing, but after the company brought Mother’s Day up twice during I/O demos, I really got to wondering what the deal is with Google and the holiday. During a demo of Google Home phone calls, Rishi Chandra, VP of home products, suggests that if he forgot to call his mom on Mother’s Day, he could do so hands-free from the stage. Chandra’s mom reminds him that Mother’s Day was three days ago to which he says he missed it because of event rehearsal. Alright.

Then later in the event, Google shows how its Photos app can be used to make a Mother’s Day gift in the form of a physical photo album. Again, Mother’s Day was on Sunday; why are we still talking about it? Maybe this is all a testament to the power of mom guilt.