google sold that one as a security feature. instead of all apps with access to your sd card (virtual internal shared storage) having access to your photos, the

google sold that one as a security feature. instead of all apps with access to your sd card (virtual internal shared storage) having access to your photos, they created a secure photo storage, and apps can subscribe to it. they just happen to conveniently offer a bloatware photo app, shipped with every device just like internet explorer, that also happens to upload all your pictures to google servers. gphotos is the first thing I disable on every phone (because you can't uninstall bloatware system apps). chrome is the second, because I must use it to download f-droid and firefox.