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Get out of mi casa, Picasa: Google photo site to join Wave, Code, Reader in silicon hell

Estás muerto para mi

Google will shut down Picasa on May 1. Any pictures stored in the online album service will be moved to Google Photos automatically.

If you don't want your snaps repossessed by Photos, the internet giant will create a read-only corner of the web to shelve your selfies, honeymoon memories and pics of your lunch and/or pets.

The writing was pretty much on the wall for Picasa when Photos launched in 2015. "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," Google Photos boss Anil Sabharwal said today.

"If you have photos or videos in a Picasa Web Album today, the easiest way to still access, modify and share most of that content is to log in to Google Photos, and all your photos and videos will already be there.

"However, for those of you who don’t want to use Google Photos or who still want to be able to view specific content, such as tags, captions or comments, we will be creating a new place for you to access your Picasa Web Albums data. That way, you will still be able to view, download, or delete your Picasa Web Albums, you just won’t be able to create, organize or edit albums (you would now do this in Google Photos)."

All this kicks off on the first day of May; the API for developers will also lose functionality. From March 15, Google will cease development of Picasa apps.

Google gobbled Picasa – some kind of cute reference to Pablo Picasso and the Spanish phrase mi casa – in 2004. Now the service will join Google Wave, Google Reader, Google Code, Google Labs, Google Glass, and others, in the digital afterlife. ®

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