Google to shut down Picasa on May 1, 2016
We know a lot of you use Picasa to manage your pictures. According to Google’s Picasa Blog, the will be transitioning from Picasa to Google Photos. If you use Picasa and choose not to use Google Photos, you’ll need to wait for a while as Google gets things organized. Google will not be updating Picasa after March 15, 2016 – but users will still be able to use the Picasa desktop but there will be no more updates.
The following is from Google’s Picasa Blog:
Moving on from Picasa
Friday, February 12, 2016 10:00 AM
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. 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.
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. So we will take some time in order to do this right and provide you with options and easy ways to access your content. We’ve outlined below some of the changes you can expect.
Picasa Web Albums
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. Using Google Photos, you can continue to upload and organize your memories, as well as enjoy other great benefits like better ways to search and share your images.
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, we 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. We’ll start rolling out these changes on May 1, 2016.
Desktop application
As of March 15, 2016, we will no longer be supporting the Picasa desktop application. 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 we will not be developing it further, and there will be no future updates.
For those of you who use Picasa, you can get the full scoop at Google’s Picasa Blog.
SIGH!!! Why can’t they leave things alone. When something is working well, leave it alone! These “young executive minds” are always changing things, thinking they are improving life. Not always so. And they never ask if we would like or need change. They just pull the rug out from under our feet and expect us to be excited about what their needs are! Don’t humans count anymore on this planet??
Cloudeight, would you still use Picasa desktop after March 15 2016 if Google is not updating it anymore. Meaning security updates and etc. If it was being used local, In your opinion.
I have perhaps 25,000 photo’s on Picasa, now what ? As someone else said, if it ain’t broke, don’t mess it up !!! NOT a fun time ahead for me ! Ya, always something to complicate the picture even more !
As the article points out, those who want to keep using Picasa will be able to continue to use it without any changes – but it will no longer be updated.