Exclusive News: Google Retired Blogger and Picasa Services

Bloggers and photo lovers its time to bid adieu to the epic services such as Blogger and Picasa as Google decided to pull the plug on several services that are not labeled under the Google brand. They planned on converting the services to suit the Google line of products and enhance them. This came up as research from the guys down in Mashable.

The move is another play implied by Google on the chess board of social media initiatives, by which it wanted to bring about a unification of its services in the launch of its social network Google Plus. The company is trying hard to make itself a worthy opponent of Facebook (apparently the social network King of the web).


Sorry if we gave you a first impression that Blogger and Picasa are actually being wiped out. They are two of Google’s top products and they would have to be bonkers to let it go away like that. Instead the services received new names under Google branding, Picasa will be called “Google Photos” and Blogger was renamed to “Google Blogs”. Several other Google brands are likely to be affected, though sources made it clear that YouTube would not be rebranded. The technology giant shut down Google Video, its failed web video service, in May.


The move isn’t without future insight as Google acquired JotSpot in 2006 and rebranded it as Google Sites in 2008. Also it acquired the VOIP based platform GrandCentral and relaunched it as Google Voice in 2009.


Picassa and Blogger have also been acquisitions of the company but have been part of the company much longer than the other services. Picasa was acquired in 2004 and Blogger (co-founded by Evan Williams of Twitter) was acquired in 2003 and is one of the top 10 most visited websites in the world. The only upset in re-branding is the consumer’s sentiments towards the move. However changing the names would allow Google to easily integrate the services into its social network Google +.


The transitions of the names took place over a period of one month to one and a half month. The dates were simultaneously aligned with the launch of Google Plus. Google didn’t want multiple identities of its user’s on different services hence decided to integrate them all under a common super account that allows access to any of its services through a single user name. Thanks for clearing the unnecessary need for so many passwords Google!! This way its a lot more efficient.


Besides Google+ makes complete sense for Blogger and Picasa, they are two social products that improve as more people use them. Also note worthy is that Google+ already has a photos feature, a product that we believe utilizes Picasa technology. Also important to note that Google+’s photo feature has no Picasa branding of any kind