Google Acquires Picasa, Improves Blogging Tools

clandestine writes "It appears that our lovable search engine has again expanded its horizons - the internet wasn't enough; now you can search and organize your own pictures. I don't know about you, but I use Google for nearly everything; heck, I found links about their acquisition of Picasa through Google News! Any slashdotters going to benefit from this tech, or already do? And yes, the addition of Picasa to their arsenal is a couple of days old, but they just started linking them on the homepage today."

Monopoly

[yuting]

Seems like Google is expanding to more areas of our internet lives... Would this be another Microsoft coming?

Well...I'm still waiting

[incognitox]

This might be awesome, or it might not. I'm not overly impressed with Google's web picture search, so I'm not gonna hold my breath on this one. Their forte is search of text, and sure, you can put a million keywords or a clever description on each picture, but that doesn't really help me. I want to be able to sketch a rough version of the picture and have the system find all images which match it. Or how about identification of individual people? So that I can outline a section of a given picture and it'll find all other pictures which contain a similar section (AKA a given person).

Then I'll get excited...

Re:Monopoly

[Fenresulven]

I think it's an attempt to survive the built in search options in Longhorn. So it would be more along the lines of surviving Microsoft than trying to become Microsoft.

Funny thing..

[yummy1991]

When microsoft "expands" we all bitch and whine, but then google goes out and devours companies and services, and its suddenly "cute".

Re:Well...I'm still waiting

[sseremeth]

Get imgseek [sourceforge.net].

Well..

[manavendra]

I think its a classic example of building your business around your strength - the searching capability.

It shouldnt come across as a surprise that google wants to build components/lines of business around their core strength - be it news, images, blogs or whatever else.

Though what they do need to watch out for is the acceptance, usability and and value provided by these tools in the long run (~5 years). We have all seen numerous examples of companies that had a killer product, but failed to replicate that success elsewhere.

Like someone else mentioned, their image searching capabilities aren't as desirable currently. I haven't been so impressed with google groups yet (though I've heard that's going to be revamped as well). And then there's news and email in beta... so yes, they do have a lot on their plate, and given the poor run of tech industry at the stock market, all eyes will be on them!

sp7zFh5.exe

[cosmicpossum]

Has anyone downloaded and installed Picasa? As part of the install I get a ZoneAlarm alert saying sp7zFh5.exe is trying to use Picasa to access the internet.

I think it is questionable coding practice to have obscurely named subprocesses running around wanting to get to the net.

I'm Concerned

[youngerpants]

Google became a great company by sticking to its business plan; back linked search rankings with a simple interface.

Then came GIS, which still focuses on the main business, then came the toolbar which starts encroaching on the PC/ browser, then came IRC search... can you see where I'm heading

Which other company can we think of who add more and more functionality to an existing product... as long as this doesnt effect Googles core business, no problem, but this is very rarely the case.

Will we even recognise Google in 5 years time (or less)

I seen this

[omar.sahal]

.........and thought of downloading it, what stopped me was that i thought this company does not charge for there software, how do they make money. Are they making money buy selling info about what we are looking at on our hardrives. If this isn't the case then what motivated the purchase of this company, that doesn't haven't revenue streams that I can see of. Or are Google interested in the technology from this company.

Google a threat?

[Anonymous Coward]

We've seen google expand into other areas, generally involving search or adding search technology to something else.

This is understandable, they've saturated the search engine market, a company has to grow if it is to survive, with the market saturated, where *can* they grow?

I like and use google but have to wonder if they are (or will be) a threat in terms of making it difficult for companies to conduct business on the internet by hiding or "tweaking" the search results. Will the internet "sense this as damange and route around it" or, will people not even realize the results have been adjusted?

Right now, they don't seem threatening, it would appear anyone could compete with them since the internet is open standards based. As a company, they appear remarkably ethical (which can change as new managers appear..) the 64k question is, are they or will they become a monopoly?

Re:I'm Concerned

[dissy]

IRC search?
Dunno if that was a typo or not, but thats news to me..
Any info on that you could share?

Look at me! I'm a Troll!

[numbski]

Okay, so I love Google like the rest of you. They are privately held, seem to actually have a sense of ethics, and tend to do things 'the right way'.

That said, Google is starting to get big. Really big.

As in big enough to throw it's weight around big. I'm not opposed to this, in fact I'd be first in line (or rather as close to the front as I could get) for a Google IPO, but at what point does the whole competition getting squashed thing become a concern?

I'll say it again, I love Google.

this is nothing. I want to see more

[xutopia]

Microsoft has plenty of ressources and offerings that Google isn't giving. For example MS can leverage their browser, they can package any picture software they want into their next OS or Service Pack, they have an IM which tells users when they receive an email from someone.

What Google needs to do is extend what it is offering and blow MS out of the water. If more companies join then MS will have to start playing fair or die.

Google, please :

1. package Firefox 1.0 with added features as the GoogleFox browser
2. make Picasa run on Linux and Mac
3. offer an IM ala Jabber that allows us to get email notification like MSN Messenger does.
4. extend your Gmail offering to other people than the limited bunch currently seen

Then and only then will Google's offerings be competing with MS. All of this can be done very cheaply and unless Google get's moving MS will crush them with Marketing power and their market power.

Google

[HarveyBirdman]

Am I the only one who uses Google as a quick spellchecker?

Re:*shrug*

[incognitox]

Exactly!

What I was getting at in my original post was that everyone seems to think that as soon as Google touches something, it's immediately made amazing. Not true! They ruined Deja News for a _loooong time_ (Have you seen their latest beta for groups? Still needs work).

In addition, we, as users, need to keep asking for new features and creating a _DEMAND_ for good products. I send in bugfixes & feature requests several times per week on Gmail. I think that Gmail is far and away _the best_ webmail product out there, but I still get irritated and fire off suggestions about portions of it which don't make sense (what's the point of being able to create a labeling filter that only applies one label? The whole point of labels is to be able to apply several!!!).

So to sum it up, I'm interested, but just not immediately a Picassa zelot just because Google grabbed it...

Re:Monopoly

[vk2]

Exactly - I weighed my options of paying the 19.99$ per account for the archive and 2gb features but when I came across fetchyahoo [sourceforge.net] I was very much impressed about the features and ease with which you can download mails from yahoo.

Didn't mean to steal $$ from yahoo but 19$ is too steep per account. However I do pay them for the personal email addresses - So I guess I am justified.

Re:Monopoly

[yuting]

Microsoft's vision used to be "a computer on every desktop and in every home" (with Windows being the only OS).

Google's vision is "make the world's information universally accessible and useful" (with Google the only way to access it?) ;)

Re:Only MS-Windows support, move along

[Alazoral]

No Mac OS X support makes me a sad walrus :( hopefully they'll write a plugin for iPhoto or Portfolio or something or port it. Please Google, Mac users have lots of photos too, whether they are designers or grandparents. Or designers who are grandparents. Or designers who design grandparents.

Software Giant in the making?

[blackmonday]

One of Google's primary strengths is its software, no doubt they're trying to capitalize on that. Do I see Google becoming the Apple within Microsoft? Isn't their other product a search application that you download and run within windows, effectively competing with Microsoft's explorer? Now this program, which reminds me of iPhoto (download from the camera easily, print, organize, etc). This is a competitor to Windows XP's built-in photo management.

Google is competing with Microsoft, and using their own operating system against them!

Re:sp7zFh5.exe

[LincolnQ]

Wait...

you're telling me you searched Google [google.com] for the name of the executable trojan that comes with their own product? And you think they would reveal this information why?

Re:Q: When will they start being evil?

[OmniVector]

that's kind of hard to do when the company's explicitly still going to be under the control of the two founders. if you read their IPO, they are retaining ownership of the company when it goes "public." it's actually unfounded, and google is the first to do this. since they have such high mindshare in the tech industry though they're managing to get away with it.

Re:Web APIs

[manmanic]

It's true that Google's API Terms [google.com] are restrictive:

"The Google Web APIs service is made available to you for your personal, non-commercial use only"

But it looks like they're open to successful applications being commercialized. For example, according to their FAQs [googlealert.com] and this article [theregister.co.uk], Google Alert [googlealert.com] have been granted permission to sell a service based on the APIs:

"Google has agreed to our release of premium paid Google Alert services."

So it looks like Google were just waiting for someone to come along with a commercially viable application - see also these two [hoverscore.com] interviews [traffick.com] for more background. I've been following this story for a while...

Picasa is very serious!

[vivarin]

I was one of the original developers of Picasa (search, web export and other features). I've got to say, the former Kai Krause developers who work there really know their pixels. Even in the 1.0 incarnation you'll see a lot of attention to subtle details of animation, alpha blending and UI that is usually missing from commercial apps. Every last coder there has written notrivial Mac and Linux software, so it's up to Google to pull the strategic trigger for those ports, if any.

I'm pretty certain that those guys will be making iPhoto users jealous before long.

Data checks in, but it never checks out?

[Atario]

I started to get all excited about Adobe Album over the image-tagging and querying and stuff ("show me pictures with both me and my wife in the last month"), but then I realized there would be no way for me to get that information back out of the program again if I ever wanted to change to another picture manager -- it seems it's stuck in some proprietary internal DB. (Or am I wrong about that?) So I've held of, unsure about which way to go next.

Now, I got all excited because Google is putting out their own picture manager -- great, the search gurus will get it right! But...you're saying there's no image tagging at all? Arg. I hope they add it sometime soon. (And maintain it in some plain text file.)

Google-based thin client?

[Snart Barfunz]

Would it be possible/desirable/sensible to make/sell a Linux based thin client that used Google services for data storage? Wonder if Google would ever offer a branded thin client?

Re:My Google Picasa review

[pixel.jonah]

A few things:

* Picasa's speed is amazing! The core guys are really into inner loop optimization - how few cycles can you do a divide in?

* The fact that Picasa treats each directory of images as an album is actually quite nice - you can find your pictures outside of Picasa if you need to.

* You can create new virtual albums and move images to them - this leaves the pics in their original directories though.

* There is a high-res slideshow mode - go into Options > Slideshow and check "Do full-resolution slideshow" if your videocard has enough 2D performance, it's WAY better.