Google to Shut Down Picasa in Favor of Google Photos
Google has announced that it will shut down its Picasa photo service on 1 May 2016. The company advises Picasa users to log in to Google Photos to access their Picasa photos, which should already be transferred. Google also said that it will provide a way for Picasa users to access their photos without Google Photos. As for the Picasa desktop app, Google will stop supporting it on 15 March 2016. We can’t say that we’re surprised by this move, since Google has shifted heavily toward Google Photos, but we will miss Picasa’s Mac app, as it was one of only a handful of alternatives to Apple’s Photos on the Mac.
I like Picasa, because I can keep my pictures in folders. But the program contradicts Google's approach to perform everything in the cloud. Keeping things under control of the user to respect privacy seems to be a dying concept.