Say adios to Google's Picasa

By Lulu Chang Published February 12, 2016

Image used with permission by copyright holder

The inevitable has finally happened — Google has shut down Picasa. In a blog post published Friday, the Internet giant announced the shuttering of the company’s older, more dated photo storage system, and by March 15, 2016, there will be no more technical support for Picasa. Google noted that it made this decision “in order to focus entirely on a single photo service in Google Photos,” which should let the team “create a much better experience … that provides more functionality and works across mobile and desktop, rather than divide our efforts across two different products.” So adios, Picasa. It’s been real.

Picasa was first acquired back in July 2004, and for over a decade, it served its purpose. But when Google Photos was unveiled in May of last year, having the two services seemed redundant. And now, Google is finally doing something about it.

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“We know for many of you, a great deal of care has gone into managing your photos and videos using Picasa — including the hours you’ve invested and the most precious moments you’ve trusted us with,” wrote Anil Sabharwal, Head of Google Photos. “So we will take some time in order to do this right and provide you with options and easy ways to access your content.”

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If you already have the software, nothing will really happen. You’ll still be able to see your photos, but developers will lose some of their functionality, and Google won’t continue to roll out updates to the software. The best course of action, as per Google’s blog post, is to start migrating things over to Google Photos, where you’ll be able to continue uploading and organizing images in perpetuity.

But Sabharwal stresses that no changes have happened quite yet — they’re just giving us fair warning.

“We apologize for any inconvenience this transition causes, but we want to assure you that we are doing this with the aim of providing the best photos experience possible,” the Google Photos head wrote. “Google Photos is a new and smarter product, that offers a better platform for us to build amazing experiences and features for you in the future.”

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