And its finally here ! The answer to that long running marathon question asked to Google every now and then — why the heck are you running two separate photo storage/sharing applications, i.e. Google Photos and the long forgotten Picasa ? Well, the answer to that — the search giant is finally killing Picasa for good, and won’t support it starting March 15th this year.
Ever since Google Photos was launched, it was obvious for people to ask questions about future of Picasa. A selected lot has also wondered as to why the company did not pursue with Picasa’s further development instead of launching an all new application.
Announcing Picasa’s demise, Anil Sabharwal, Head of Google Photos says,
Since the launch of Google Photos, we’ve had a lot of questions around what this means for the future of Picasa. After much thought and consideration, we’ve decided to retire Picasa over the coming months in order to focus entirely on a single photo service in Google Photos.
Google says, that it “can create a much better experience by focusing on one service that provides more functionality and works across mobile and desktop, rather than divide efforts across two different products.” Well, what can I say…happy realisation world’s most valued company !
Now, if you are a Picasa user and are wondering whats next for you, well Google has made detailed plans for you folks.
If you have photos or videos in a Picasa Web Album today, the easiest way to still access, modify and share most of that content is to — ofcourse — log in to Google Photos, and all your photos and videos will already be there.
However, for those of you who don’t want to use Google Photos or who still want to be able to view specific content, such as tags, captions or comments, Google will be creating a new place for you to access your Picasa Web Albums data. That way, you will still be able to view, download, or delete your Picasa Web Albums, you just won’t be able to create, organize or edit albums (you would now do this in Google Photos).
One thing to make clear is that none of this is happening today—if you have a Picasa Web Album you can keep using it as normal. Google will start rolling out these changes on May 1, 2016.
Now for the desktop application. Well, the search giant is officially plugging off support starting march 15th this year. What that means, is that for those who have already downloaded this—or choose to do so before this date—it will continue to work as it does today, but Google will not be developing it further, and there will be no future updates.
As for developers, the company will be retiring some functions of the Picasa API. Developers can learn more here.
