Why Picasa is important for Google?

General Thoughts, System Utility January 20th, 2005

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Tags: Microsoft

Why Picasa is important for Google?

While the competition is trying to catch-up with Google on the search engine front, they have instead worked on raising the bar in other fields. They swept the carpet from under the competition’s feet when they released the Google Desktop Search out of nowhere. That led to Microsoft and Yahoo! announcing their plans for similar products. Now we have practically got 10 choices in that segment alone! That too in just a couple of months.

Another masterstroke from Google was noticed when they bought the Picasa software along with Hello instant messenger and image sharing application. It gave Google headstart in another competitive field as both Microsoft and Yahoo! lacks a similar image organizer which is freely available for download. Even better is the fact that Picasa can work as a searching utility as well.

Digital Photography is taking the online world with a storm. People have started moving from plain jane Blogs to Photo Blogs. The availability of digital cameras and bigger hard drives has made it easier than ever for consumers to store large number of images on their computers. And organizing and optimizing photos with special effects is a great market to be in.

Google has integrated Picasa and Hello with their own Blogging service Blogger.com. They are letting users store and host images for free on their Blogs. In addition, with version 2 of Picasa, they have even integrated GMail for sending mails to friends and relatives. Picasa in a way is helping them capitalize on a much larger market, which in the long run would bring them more users, who would stay with their services. That is where MSN and Yahoo! have an edge over Google and this is where Google is planning to hit them hard next…

6 Comments to “Why Picasa is important for Google?”

carlos perez | January 20th, 2005 at 06:14 am

I’m kinda anti-yahoo and microsoft although I have no choice when it comes to M software at work. Does Google offer web hosting? I have not noticed it if you do. If not, who do you recommend?
Justin | January 20th, 2005 at 09:15 am

We shouldn’t disregard Microsoft so quickly, they’ve never failed to control a market they’ve set their sights on. Everyone said that IE could never overtake Netscape…
roderickm | January 20th, 2005 at 04:12 pm

Google’s Picasa seems like a Windows-friendly answer to Apple’s iPhoto. I anticipate the competition between iPhoto and Picasa improving the photo management and online integration (Blog/CMS-friendliness) of each. This software battle may heat up quickly, particularly because a major update of iPhoto will be released on January 22 as part of iLife ‘05. Apple’s iTunes made the leap to Windows; it’s not unthinkable that iPhoto eventually does the same.
Bill MacGregor | January 21st, 2005 at 02:08 am

Good Luck for all who use Picasa! I beta tested it last year for about 10 min’s then used GoBack to get all of it off my box. Uninstalling made it look like it had been uninstalled BUT starting mozilla w/ google as the start page, the reason I uninstalled showed up instantly. ALL the PORTS THAT Picasa USED TO CALL HOME OPENED AGAIN, well tried to.
I sure hope everyone that thinks GMail and any other program/utilliy that Google gives you free will take the time to Learn that Nothing Google gives you FREE is “Free” in the long run.
If you cannot read legaleez find someone that can to read every TOS [terms of service]that Google has. If you uuderstand them you will never use any Google program, except their search engine, witch you can control.
Have fun Bill MacGregor
Ps G-mail users DO NOT bother sending mail to me with a GMail account. Do to securty reasons I Must delete it without opening it!!!!!!!!!!!
Robert Anthony | January 28th, 2005 at 06:55 am

I find the comment above (4) very contrived. Picasa doesn’t change your homepage to google, and if you watch the port Picasa opens on launch, you will see that it’s only a request to the update server for current version info. Regardless of what others say, I appreciate choice and I am glad Google has decided to offer Picasa for free with no strings attached.
Gonzague Dambricourt | June 26th, 2006 at 03:11 am

Picasa is just a very easy to use software

There’s a point I dislike : it forces indexation of your hard drive for pictures.

Annoying….but the soft is working very well with Picasa Web Albums !