The difference is that Apple has been doing this on-device for maybe 4-5 years already with the Neural Engine. Every iOS version has brought more stuff you can search for.
The current addition is "just" about adding a natural language interface on top of data they already have about your photos (on device, not in the cloud).
My iPhone 14 can, for example, detect the breed of my dog correctly from the pictures and it can search for a specific pet by name. Again on-device, not by sending my stuff to Google's cloud to be analysed.
They have been trying and failing to do a tiny little bit of this. It's so broken and useless that I've been uploading all my iCloud photos to Google as well, for search and sharing.
If you like Google using your personal photos for machine learning, that's your option. Now they have your every photo, geotagged and timestamped so they can see where you have been and at what times. Then they of course anonymise that information into an "advertiser id" they tag on to you and a sufficient quantity of other people so they can claim they're not directly targeting anyone.
>If you like Google using your personal photos for machine learning, that's your option.
It's a trade-off between getting the features I need and the price I have to pay. All else being equal I do prefer privacy as well. Unfortunately, all else is not equal.
Besides I could do "named person on a beach in August" and get the correct thing in photos on Android photos, so I don't get it.
It's amazing for apple users if they didn't have it before. But from a tech stand point people could have had it for a while.