Google stops Picasa and continues Photos

Google has announced that it will stop offering the photo application Picasa. In the coming months, the company plans to fully transition to the Google Photos service. All content from current Picasa users is now also present in Photos, the company says.

Google indicates that it can provide a better experience to its users in this way. For example, Photos would have more functionality and be available on both mobile and desktop devices. The transition will not take place immediately, but will start from May 1. The Picasa desktop application will no longer be supported from March 15. That means it will still work, but will no longer receive updates.

Users who do not want to automatically switch to the new service can take advantage of a separate feature that allows them to still use their old Picasa content with tags and subtitles. They will then no longer be able to add new content to their albums or edit existing content, according to Google. Picasa Web Albums will remain unaffected by the changes and some features of the Picasa api will disappear.