On Friday, Google announced that it will be shutting down Picasa as the company turns its focus towards Google Photos.
The search giant said it will retire the longtime photo storage solution in the coming months, and instead commit to the future of Photos, which was announced last year. Photos offers users free unlimited storage with an incredibly easy-to-use interface.
Picasa users probably knew this day would come, and now the reality is finally sinking in. If you’re a heavy Picasa user, it sounds like the transition should be pretty painless. Google said:
“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 log in to Google Photos, and all your photos and videos will already be there.”
In the event you don’t want to use Google Photos, the search giant said it will create “a new place” for Picasa users to view specific content, such as tags, captions and comments. You’ll be able to view your Picasa Web Albums, you just won’t be able to edit them.
On March 15, Google will cease support for the Picasa desktop application. Meanwhile, on May 1, the changes occurring to Picasa on the Web will begin to take effect.
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I hated that Google did this, I loved Picasa and I still do.
Picasa could integrate into pretty much anyone Android phones default gallery app, Sony, Samsung, etc. But Google photos does not.
So let’s say I’m using a Sony phone. I take amazing burst shots and I’m showing them off to my friends. Now I’m going to show them my old wedding photos, I then need to close Sony gallery and open Googles gallery to access those cloud photos, where Picasa would integrate the two together.
It just goes to show how modular and fragmented Android and the OEMs who use it are. I’m by no means and Android hater, I built my blogging career around it, but it’s definitely one of the big downsides of the OS.
Haven’t used Picasa in years, so I won’t miss it. Google Photos has been pretty phenomenal for backing up old hard drives and organizing the images.
They say my albums would already be on Googles Photo but they’re not there. What do I do? Do it have to manually move them? This is going to break all links right?