As Google continues to test out its newly launched Google+ social networking service, a new report today claims that Google will soon rename two of its long running divisions as a way to help out the Google+ branding. According to Mashable, citing unnamed sources, the company"s blogging service Blogger and its photo sharing service Picasa will be renamed as Google Blogs and Google Photos, respectively.
According to the article, the rebranding of both divisions is "part of a larger effort to unify its brand for the public launch of Google+." Indeed the article claims that other Google divisions may also get new names as well. One exception, for obvious reasons, is Google"s video streaming service YouTube which is truly one of the Internet"s best know brands. The new names for Blogger and Picasa are expected to happen "in a month to a month and a half" according to the article. It also claims that Google will publicly launch Google+ to the general public July 31, if not before. So far Google has yet to comment on the story.
Launched in 1999 by Pyra Labs, the Blogger service was later purchased by Google in 2003 and is still one of the most popular ways for people to launch their own blog sites. Google has since made many improvements to Blogger but in 2010 announced that all blogs made with Blogger must be hosted on Google"s servers. Picasa was launched in 2002 by IdeaLab and lets its users view, organize and edit photos. Picasa was acquired by Google in 2004 and is now a free download.