Google today announced on their official blog that they will be retiring their old photo service, Picasa to focus exclusively on Google Photos. This is to ensure that they can center their efforts on creating a beautiful and functional appearance across mobile devices and personal computers instead of having to split time and effort across two services.
What does this mean for the users? As Google points out twice in their announcement, nothing right now. Thankfully, Google knows the attachment and investment users feel and have towards Picasa and vows to make this transition carefully. There’ll be a new place for Picasa Web Albums that will allow you to view, download and delete them though you can’t edit, create or organise. All of that can be done by signing into Google Photos. This change will begin to rollout from the 1st of May.
The desktop application, which is loved by so many and is still the primary image viewer on most computers will not be updated after the 15th of March. Of course, the program itself will continue to function. It just won’t be supported by Google anymore. Uploading photos must now be done via Google Photos’ desktop uploader.
Google will also be retiring Picasa API functions and promises more details come March.
While Google’s vision to create a solid product is appreciated, it is inevitable that people will miss Picasa. Google Photos might prove to be far more than a worthy successor but there are just too many memories. Literally. Feel free to share yours below and we can all commiserate. Farewell Picasa!
Picasa is my favorite. I can’t farewell him. It’s the best tool.