While it is uncertain how many users have stuck it out with Picasa, Google is finally shutting down the service in favor of 'Photos'. The service will cease to exist on May 1st, 2016.
In 2002, a company called Lifescape started Picasa and envisioned a service that would allow storage, editing and viewing of images online. After a couple years, Google saw the potential and snapped up the photo service, making it its own over the next decade.
With the relative lack luster response to Google's social networking platform, Google+, the company decided to dismantle the service and present the strongest parts as stand-alone components. This would mean that Stream, Photos and Hangouts would become their own respective products. It was at this moment that Picasa's fate was sealed, as Google would undoubtedly at some point fold in or discontinue the redundant photo service.
Today, Google announced that Picasa would indeed by shuttered in the coming months and that user would have until May 1st to continue using the service. Those working with the desktop app will only have until March 15th, before the app fails to operate. Luckily, content from Picasa has been automatically moved over to Google Photos and will only require users to log in to see their content.
Source: Google
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