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Google Technology

Google To Rebrand Blogger & Picasa For Google+ Integration 162

Posted by Soulskill from the great-googley-moogley dept.
dkd903 writes "Google plans to rebrand its photo-sharing platform Picasa and the blogging platform Blogger and will re-introduce them as Google Photos and Google Blogs. All this forms part of a massive feature addition to Google's new social network, Google+."
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Google To Rebrand Blogger & Picasa For Google+ Integration More

Google To Rebrand Blogger & Picasa For Google+ Integration

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    • I completely agree, until they can at least save the feature set. I use the facial recognition to help sort hundreds of photos at a time. I don't necessarily want to "share" recognition, but I still want it to organize my own photos.

      • With Google+ you can actually save all of your photos to your hard disk. It downloads them as a zip. :)

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Macrat ( 638047 )

        I completely agree, until they can at least save the feature set. I use the facial recognition to help sort hundreds of photos at a time. I don't necessarily want to "share" recognition, but I still want it to organize my own photos.

        Then you should just use iPhoto instead of uploading to a web site.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Cinder6 ( 894572 )

          I would like to use iPhoto, but the big feature it's missing for me is auto-discovery of pictures.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by syousef ( 465911 )

      I really hate the cloud.

      I also hate the cloud, but they have already FUCKED Picasa. It always had a few quirks but it is now so buggy that I don't trust it. After months of correcting face data, after my latest upgrade it just started becoming corrupt every few restarts. The first time I lost probably 40 man hours of work. Fuck Google. Fuck Picasa. Fuck the "Cloud".

  • I thought I'd have a look, and went to the page where it asked me to log in with my google account. I did so, only to *then* be told that you can't join up!

    I understand they're in beta (hey, what google product isn't in perpetual beta?!), but the point of a social network is to attract and maintain users. Right now, all the buzz going around quickly dissipates from people when they reach the doors of the country club, only to be turned away.

    A friend of mine received an invite for it, but she cannot make an

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by sqrt(2) ( 786011 )

      You need a friend who already has it to invite you. They are not doing "official" invites right now, but you can still get an invite by having someone add you to a circle and then send you a notification of some content being posted. That's how I got in, a stranger from 4chan added my e-mail address and I got a link in the e-mail to sign up.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Lifyre ( 960576 )

        Huh, I thought they had closed that particular loop hole since it has failed for me a couple times now. Maybe I'm doing it wrong.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by jo_ham ( 604554 )

        Yes, my friend got one of those invites from someone already "in", but Google told her that it was full when she tried to claim the invite and set up an account.

        • That is exactly the situation I'm in. Pretty annoying.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by xnpu ( 963139 )

            Weird. When I share something on Google+ it asks me permission to e-mail all the non-Google+ member that I added to my circles. These people then all are able to login. (Provided they have a US IP address.)

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by slyrat ( 1143997 )

          Yes, my friend got one of those invites from someone already "in", but Google told her that it was full when she tried to claim the invite and set up an account.

          Keep trying to get in. They are letting people in still, just a little at a time. I can also understand why they are doing it since the want to make sure things are good this time, before everyone is jumping in.

      • Funny, I got my invite (several, actually) by giving out an email on 4chan as well. Though G+ still is saying they're full and can't add me, and I've tried repeatedly the last few days.

      • That is how you do it, for sure, but as the other comments here indicate, there is still limited capacity even then. I got a linked by a friend from FB, but it was a few hours before I got in. I think the number being allowed in at a time is just very small, so you just have to hit it at the right moment after they allow a new batch, but before it runs out.

    • I suspect they are being exclusive so they don't blow up their servers before they are sure they can handle the load.

      • Re:Google+, the social network you cannot join! (Score:5, Funny)

        by sqrt(2) ( 786011 ) on Tuesday July 05, 2011 @02:56PM (#36664936) Journal

        You think they're running on a Pentium III server in Sergey's garage? It's Google we are talking about, not Twitter :p

        They already index the whole world, read everyone's e-mail, and watch you from roving surveillance vans. Connecting you with your friends and letting you share pics shouldn't tax them too much.

        • Re:Google+, the social network you cannot join! (Score:5, Funny)

          by cgenman ( 325138 ) on Tuesday July 05, 2011 @07:29PM (#36667412) Homepage

          They already index the whole world, read everyone's e-mail, and watch you from roving surveillance vans. Connecting you with your friends and letting you share pics shouldn't tax them too much.

          "Welcome to Google+. Would you like to connect your account with your friends and family?
          Just kidding. We already know who your friends and family are. By the way, here is a satellite photo of your daughter, whom you forgot at soccer practice."

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        No, they're being exclusive right now because they massively screwed up the last time they tried to create a social networking capability, Google Buzz. It failed miserably, because the people running it were utterly ignorant about how their customers would react to it. With Buzz, they imposed it on all of their existing GMail customers (among others), whether we wanted it or not, and we had to actively take steps to keep them from sharing our personal information with others... and in some cases, we couldn'

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jo_ham ( 604554 )

        That was one of my possible points - if anyone has server power to spare it's Google.

    • I can't believe that people are complaining that they can't join the beta of a social networking site that just launched less than a week ago. Come back to complain when it's been 4 months. They were planning on letting more people in right now, but then someone found a bug that allowed someone to send infinite invites and they got overwhelmed. Give it a little bit and I'm sure it will open up again.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jo_ham ( 604554 )

        The salient point being "social networking site" that they've been hyping, and advertising... only to not let you in.

        If that was a discovered bug, then why not mention that - the message I got was "we're full at the moment!".

        The entire point of launching it is surely to get users and generate interest, if they truly do want to "topple" facebook. How many people are going to keep checking back after getting turned away during the big launch phase where it's all fresh?

        • yeah, except they didn't launch, they launched a beta. Do you people complain this much when Blizzard runs a closed beta version of WoW and only some people are allowed in? Give it a little bit of time. As I pointed out. It's been a week since they launched the beta.
          • I agree...Google has pretty much always done their betas in a limited closed environment...from gmail, google voice, wave, and now Google+. Granted I got an invite early on from a random user so I can't complain.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by brunes69 ( 86786 )

        I think this staged rollout is a mistake. Social networks are fickle beasts. The problem is, if all of my friends are not able to sign up to Google+ (they can't), then I have little incentive to post things to it, when they are all on Facebook.

        Fast forward to 3 months from now, when it is open to all - but it's too late because everyone who initially was interested has moved on and no one cares anymore.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by x6060 ( 672364 )
      I'm guessing that they are allowing people to join as they are adding capacity. Also it is REALLY hard to deal with 50 million new users that all sign up, create profiles, upload photos, send messages, search through the other 50 million people so they can add them, create groups, make events and invite 100+ people in a single day if they opened it to everyone all at the same time on a brand new product.

    • Re:Google+, the social network you cannot join! (Score:4, Informative)

      by Marble68 ( 746305 ) on Tuesday July 05, 2011 @02:54PM (#36664914) Homepage

      As a member of G+ - I can understand why they shut off new subscribers.

      Their threading logic was cumbersome and needed work. The "rings" concept is cool - but when you have threads that "fork" - as in one conversation becomes closed to one ring - and another conversation to a different ring - the UI representation was horrible. If the people I interact with weren't limited - I would have turned away from G+ pretty quickly.

      I'm get the feeling invites will open up again, soon. The UI has undergone some minor tweaks, the mobile app got updated, HangOuts is working better now.

      Some of the stuff that's not quite perfected (IMHO) are the "nearby posts" and "incoming posts".

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by mekkab ( 133181 )

        That sounds like the performance problems of Wave.

        • I have a sneaking suspicion that under the covers at least some of the tech is wave-derived. Well, the video hangout at least is almost certainly some form of XMPP MUC with Jingle

    • I would suspect your right in they are trying to play the exclusivity thing. However, it doesn't work if you are a Google apps account either, you have to create a profile first. However, the Google profiles don't work with Google Apps accounts. So after going round and round trying to sign up, I finally said meh, and went on my merry way. Personally, I am already sick and tired of all the buzz and news and articles on Google+ either let me in or quit interrupting my regular news with vapor ware. I am hone

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Andy Dodd ( 701 )

      Yeah, good way to shoot yourself in the foot.

      The value of any social networking site is in how many users it has. If no one you know uses something, why will you use it?

      I don't use Latitude because none of my friends do. I don't use Buzz because no one I'm friends with wound up using it. Same for Wave. Google+ will probably wind up the same.

      • Am I the only one that remembers when Facebook was restricted to college students only? For years the only "invite" you could get to Facebook was having a .edu email address. Everyone's griping about Google+ being invite only Facebook did it pretty successfully for years.
        • Yes, but remember that once Facebook allowed .edu addresses from your institution then any of your friends could join with no hassle. Specifically, I remember when I first joined; a good number of my friends were already members. If any were missing, many soon joined after they heard of the "wonders" of Facebook. So you have to remember that Facebook started with groups where it was natural to have many social connections.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jo_ham ( 604554 )

          Yes, but when it was all .edu addresses... crucially that was all your local university friends at once, when it hit a new campus.

          Right now I have a spread of people who are all "doing the new thing" in G+, with the other half unable to participate - the likelihood is that the ones in G+ will drift back towards FB, where everyone is all on the same system, especially if there are showstopper bugs or it takes too long for invites to get going again (a friend has an update and is unable to sign up).

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Andy Dodd ( 701 )

          Not a big limitation - when a person is in college, the bulk of their social circle is at the same school.

          There's a huge difference between "invite only + account creation throttling" and "anyone at college campus X can get an account".

          It happens to be effective for a social network to start out in a specific localized group that already is well connected socially - e.g. Facebook started out on a single college campus (Harvard) and achieved significant market penetration within that specific market in a sho

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Shihar ( 153932 )

      Relax. It has not been released for like three whole days.

      Google is in a tricky spot. The only way to REALLY figure out how this is going to all work together is to throw some bodies at it. If they screw it up though, they don't want everyone to already be in. Think of the Buzz disaster. They let everyone in at once, made a few missteps, and Buzz was promptly dead. Google learned that they suck at rolling out products like that and are going back to their Gmail roots.

      They need Google+ to not suck befo

    • You know Facebook started out restricted to students at a single college? Then expanded to all US students, then all US residents, then everyone? Facebook had been operating for years before overseas users could register. Restricted, phased membership is nothing new to online services, not even social networks.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jo_ham ( 604554 )

        Yes, but like you said - restricted to specific colleges, so all of your local university friends could sign up at the same time and participate together at the same time.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by t2t10 ( 1909766 )

      They're not in "beta", they're not even in "alpha"; Google+ is a prototype, and experiment. It's has promise, but it also has significant limitations and problems. They want to get the bugs out with a smaller user community before letting it loose on the world.

      Once they're in beta, you will be able to join.

  • Google just sounds so sweet to my ears, much better than some random names that I don't know are associated with my favorite company of all time.

  • Google what? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Curunir_wolf ( 588405 ) on Tuesday July 05, 2011 @02:48PM (#36664812) Homepage Journal

    That's it. I'm completely fed up with hearing about this stupid new whizz-bang service, dammit! Please stop posting and blogging and writing articles about this crap.

    until you send me an invite

    • Seriously, there are loads of articles about Google+, what is going with people using it, 3rd party tools, etc........and it hasn't been released to the general public.

      Google should send thank you notes for the free promotions.

  • With confusing names like Picasa and Blogger, I was at a loss to understand what those products were and who owned them. Thank goodness Google has cleared up this mystery. Now I can go back to sorting my pocket lint by color and size.

  • Die marketing department die! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MacTO ( 1161105 ) on Tuesday July 05, 2011 @02:57PM (#36664956)

    Blogger and Picasa are good names: concise, searchable, and trademarkable.

    But I guess that Google's marketing department wants headlines to reverberate their name in the tech and business media.

    I will adjust, but I still think that the decision sucks.

    • I agree, although Google is nowhere near as bad as Microsoft where everything must contain at least four words (the longer the better) and include "Windows" branding in it somehow.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by xigxag ( 167441 )

      The problem with umbrella brands is that one weak spoke can bring down the whole brand. If Google Blogs has a problem, it will give all of Google a black eye, not just the Blogger brand. And if "Google" stops being cool, then even if they could somehow spin off the lines into their own brands again, those old labels would've lost their previous cachet. After all, the history of internet branding has taught us that the public is drastically less faithful to digital properties than they are to real world br

    • >I will adjust, but I still think that the decision sucks.

      I agree that the decision sucks. I was hoping that in the spirit of GMail, they were going to rename BlogSpot to GSpot...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jo42 ( 227475 )

      Better than "Evil Money Grubbing Corporation Photos" and "Evil Money Grubbing Corporation Blogs", nyet comrade?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Raenex ( 947668 )

      Blogger and Picasa are good names: concise, searchable, and trademarkable.

      How on earth was "Blogger" ever granted a trademark? It's incredibly generic.

    • Blogger and Picasa are good names: concise, searchable, and trademarkable.

      But I guess that Google's marketing department wants headlines to reverberate their name in the tech and business media.

      I will adjust, but I still think that the decision sucks.

      The marketing department can save your job. Be nice to them. Bear in mind, they do two things. 1) Promote existing products 2) Figure out what the available market is for a given product. As far as #2 goes, there is an incredible market segment to take away from competitors.

      Picasa has a wide user base, but it is still unknown to large swaths of the web. You and I know that Google owns blogger, but do most people? Rebranding is important to create a unified product portfolio. Especially, if they can get mo

  • I know people don't like this movie, and I agree the story has nothing to with the title or Microsoft, but this Google+ basically Synapse. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jN8LC1aDpk [youtube.com].

    • If it's from Google, it could grind newborn infants and puppies into a slurry and tech bloggers would shower it with love and geek adoration.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by cgenman ( 325138 )

        If it's from Google, it could grind newborn infants and puppies into a slurry and tech bloggers would shower it with love and geek adoration.

        It recycles!

  • I think that the majority of tech savvy users won't see the point in integrating Picasa and Blogger into the Google+ platform because we're already use to using these services and know how to navigate around them. But for people like my grandmother who think Google is just the search page and GMail, this could help to bring them to a place where they feel more comfortable using other Google services. If Blogger and Picasa look more like something that my grandmother uses every day, she's going to be more li
  • So like the potentially confusing Google Chat, Google Talk and Google Voice, there's now Google Images and Google Photo? Bravo Google! *slow clap*

  • lack of good marketing (Score:3)

    by BigGerman ( 541312 ) on Tuesday July 05, 2011 @04:13PM (#36665788)
    They should use something more evolutionary and more suitable for giant company, like: Google Plus Picasa Photo Service

  • Call me back when Picasa is a native application. I don't now nor will ever use Wine.

  • Does this mean that Google will be trying to leverage Picassa and Blogger to coerce people into joining their Network in order to use them? That's what I read in the word 'rebranding' and it doesn't sound good.

  • GoogleApps domains compatibility (Score:3)

    by Megaport ( 42937 ) on Tuesday July 05, 2011 @08:36PM (#36667846)

    I hope they don't roll up picasa and blogger until *after* they've fixed Google+ integration with GoogleApps hosted domains.

    Google have acknowledged that Google+ can't be used with email addresses hosted in GoogleApp domains but there is no word on when or if this will be fixed. Moving other products into Google+ will just reduce the number of google services that I can access, and I'm a paying google customer!

    --M

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Nursie ( 632944 )

      Irritating isn't it?

      I used my Google Apps for Domains email address to sign up for a normal Google account a little while back. This seemed weird but made most stuff work. Then a few months back I was made to merge the accounts, which took hours.

      Now this!

      My inbox is filling up with people's Google+ status updates, and there's nothing I can do with it. Irritating.

  • for my invite.. snooze. My coworker has friends in Google and he got his, but even he can't invite me to try it out. Any service that people can't use is useless.. tyvm.

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