Google said Friday that it would shut down its photo storage service Picasa to focus on its newly launched photo sharing service, Google Photos.
Picasa was originally acquired by Google in 2004, and became the search giant’s service for users to organize their online photos. It’s not particularly surprising that Google is shuttering Picasa because the company had been encouraging its users to move to Google Photos for some time.
Google Photos, which premiered in May of 2015, is a more powerful, mobile-focused service. It lets users backup an unlimited number of photos and videos to the cloud for free, and also comes with a search function that leverages artificial intelligence technology. For example, you can search for smiles and the app will show photos that include people smiling.
In October, Google said that its new Photos service had 100 million monthly active users.
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Picasa users will be able upload all their photos to the new service, and will still be able to view specific content, such as tags, captions, and comments from their old albums. Google said Picasa users will automatically see their photos in Google Photos. The full transition from Picasa to Google Photos won’t take place until May 1.
Picasa isn’t the first service Google has axed. The company has a history of shutting under performing products that it doesn’t want to invest any more time in. Social network Orkut, Google Health, and idea ranking system Google Moderator have all been retired in the past few years.