Google Is Finally Killing Picasa

It hasn’t made sense for Google to continue to invest in two separate photo storage and sharing applications, as it has been doing with the newer Google Photos and the dated software Picasa. And now the company is finally going to do something about that: Google announced Friday morning that it will no longer support the Picasa desktop application as of March 16, 2016. In addition, it will be archiving Picasa Web Albums data at a later date while encouraging those users to convert to Google Photos instead.

It’s clear that Google is concerned about backlash from its devoted user base who still relies on Picasa, given the tone of Friday’s announcement. The company emphasized how much time it has invested in making sure it makes the transition as painless as possible for end users.

“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,” writes Anil Sabharwal, Head of Google Photos on a blog post. “So we will take some time in order to do this right and provide you with options and easy ways to access your content,” he added.

For those who are using the Picasa desktop application, it will continue to work as it does today – and if you choose to download it before the shutdown date of March 16, that will also be the case. However, the software will no longer receive future updates.