It has been a little while since we have seen some updates to Google Picasa Web Albums but it looks like there are some nice things just in time for the holidays. Here are the new features that I am sure you’ll love:
- Anyone can upload videos using Picasa – Finally, a way to share those digital camera movies with friends. Learn more
- Search and tag your photos. Search over your friend’s public photos – Hey, we’re Google. Search across album descriptions, captions, our new tags and more.
- Order prints and photo products – If one of our print providers sells it, you can order it.
- Embed an album or photo in your MySpace profile or a blog
Upgrading from the limited 250MB of storage space is still quite expensive as I mentioned the other day:
- 6.25GB ($25 USD per year)
- 25GB ($100 USD per year)
- 100GB ($250 USD per year)
- 250GB ($500 USD per year)
Google really needs to step things up now to compete with Flickr because their upgraded plan, which costs less than Google’s cheapest plan, offers you unlimited everything. One thing that Google definitely has going for them is the smooth integration with the free Picasa photo management software and without that I don’t think many people would be using their online photo service. I’m actually surprised that Yahoo! (the owner of Flickr) hasn’t tried to develop their own photo management software to really try and hit Google where it counts.
News Source: Google Operating System
Yahoo should have an offline photo sofware to compete with Picasa. I know lots of people who use Picasa offline.
Picasa (offline) hasn’t changed very much in awhile. A little competition in that space would be great.
Flickr has been around for so long that I can’t believe they haven’t thought to try making some sort of desktop management software. Maybe they are too afraid that they will lose the number of people who visit the site on a daily basis?
I’ve thought for a while that Flickr should allow video uploads. I think they would be great competition for YouTube, now owned by Google. It seems to me that most of those who use Flickr are just wanting to share a piece of their life with family, friends, and who ever else. I think it would be a welcome addition.
Google is obviously more focused on getting people’s photos online, and seem to be less focused on improving the offline version of Picasa.
After thinking about it, it makes sense. Google can place ads on Picasa Web albums, as opposed to the offline version.
Perhaps Yahoo/Flickr are avoiding creating an offline version for that very reason.
I never really thought of a video service as well…but they would definitely need a bump in bandwidth to do that. After all, the Pro accounts now get unlimited everything without ads which has to put quite a strain on their servers.