The search giant Google announces that it will no longer support photo sharing Picasa as of March 15th, 2016. In the company's blog post, Google will achieve Picasa users to Google Photos. Google is also discontinuing Picasa Web Albums service on May 1, 2016.
The announcement came on February 12th, 2016. "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," said Anil Sabharwal, the head of the Google Photos team, in a blog post.
Picasa was an image organizer and image viewer for organizing and editing photos. As an integrated photo-sharing service, Picasa was originally created by Lifescape in 2002 before being acquired by Google in July 2004. Since then, the service became a native application from Google available to many operating systems.
Picasa was regarded as one of the first widely used photo editing programs on the market, and it was one of the very firsts to offer users easy to use interface for uploads and access to online storage.
As popular as it can be, one other reason Google Photos to become Picasa's replacement is that Google Photos is more mobile oriented, and more inline on Google's goal. When Google acquired Picasa, Google kept it as a desktop-oriented app and service, though apps for mobile operating systems do exist. But Google Photos is built with better gears for embracing the modern mobile lifestyle, a lot more than Picasa was.
Furthermore, Google Photos offers pretty much similar editing options with additional features such as facial recognition technology.
For those reasons, it hasn't made sense for Google to continue to invest in two separate photo storage and sharing applications. Google Photos is a newer product, thus should be better if compared to the more dated software Picasa.
"We believe we can create a much better experience by focusing on one service that provides more functionality and works across mobile and desktop, rather than divide our efforts across two different products."
While Google in shutting down its support for Picasa, there are still many loyal users who aren't willing to switch. Among the many reasons, they say that Picasa is more user-friendly. Loyal users are more accustomed to liking Picasa's interface more than Google Photos.
"Picasa editing tools are user friendly. Adjusting contrast, cropping etc.. The Google Plus tools are cumbersome, not as intuitive and lack the variety," wrote one Google user.
Some even asked Google to open-source Picasa so anyone can edit its codes and offer their own updated versions, by saying "the community can maintain it."
It's clear that Google is concerned about this issue, especially that came from the loyal and devoted users who still rely on Picasa. The company emphasizes how much of its efforts have been invested to make sure than the transaction to be painless for them.
"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. "So we will take some time in order to do this right and provide you with options and easy ways to access your content."
By ending its support, Google will no longer offer updates to keep the program updated and compatible to new operating systems. But despite the supports for the service is ending, Google stated that users who have downloaded the software, or chose to download it before the March 15 deadline, will still be able to use it. But everything the user stores will be available on Google Photos.
"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)," the post said.
While some users may understand, other hardcore users have been all out to not join Google Photos for whatever reasons. For those users, Google is practically in needs to address their issues. Google said that it will create "a new place for you to access your Picasa Web Albums data."