A couple of years ago Apple introduced Live Photos technology. Basically, these are small videos that capture the time before and after the user has pressed the capture button. An ordinary-looking photo comes to life if you press it hard (or long if your phone doesn't support 3D Touch). A great feature for situations where capturing the moment and taking the perfect photo is difficult, and you don't want to record a video. For a long time, 'Live Photos' was exclusive Apple, but now animated photos can be viewed from most platforms thanks to Google Photos.
Previously, Live Photos could only be sent from one iPhone to another. Some apps (for example, Facebook) added support for animated images – but again, this was only available on iOS. If the desire to send such a photo to someone with Android or on a PC was too strong, they had to convert it to GIF or video using special applications.
After Google introduced Motion Photos for Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL (essentially the same Live Photos), the company also updated the platform Google Photos to work with such files. The most interesting thing is that at the same time Google Photos became friends with Live Photos from Apple.
So, if you have iPhone, but you use Google Photos to store images, then all your Live Photos will be displayed correctly both on Android and on the desktop websitephotos.google.com. The same goes for the Pixel Motion Photos, which you can view at iOS.