Google to shut down Picasa, offer only Google Photos

Google has announced its decision to shut down the Picasa photo storage service and focus only on Google Photos instead.

Google revealed it would start making these changes on May 1, 2016. The Picasa desktop application will not be supported after March 15, 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," Anil Sabharwal, head of Google Photos, said in a Google blog post. "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."

Picasa is an image organiser and image viewer that was released in 2002 and following its 2004 acquisition from Landscape, it was offered as a freeware.

The company said the current users of the Picasa Web Album can access it via Google Photos. Google Photos has taken over the job of what Picasa did. Google also added users who do not want to use Google Photos would be able to access their Picasa Web Albums through a "new place" the company is creating. But users will not be able to create, organise and edit albums.

Though people can use the Picasa desktop application, the company will not release any more updates.