Google will soon retire Picasa photo service

Faced with the issue of redundancy after launching Google Photos last year, Google has decided to retire its Picasa photo service on March 15. You will continue to be able to use it, but there will be no official download available, and no updates. The Web Albums service will go offline May 1.

"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 writes in a new 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."

If you do use Picasa, you'll be taken care of: Google says it will "take some time in order to do this right and provide you with options and easy ways to access your content." In the meantime, you can already access all of your Picasa photos and videos via Google Photos. If you have some weird hatred of Google Photos, you'll soon be able to access your content in a new, currently unspecified location, although you won't be able to manage albums.