Google Album Archive

Picasa Web Albums will be discontinued on August 1st, but you can still access your photos from the new Google Album Archive. "The album archive is where we keep all the photos that have been shared or stored on Google products, like Picasa, Google+, and Blogger," informs Google.

As you probably noticed, Google Photos doesn't show photos uploaded using other Google services, so it can't fully replace Picasa Web Albums or Google+ Photos. Google Album Archive lets you see, download or delete photos from Picasa Web Albums, Google+, Blogger, Hangouts, Google Drive and Google Photos.

Album Archive doesn't have a search feature, but there are separate sections for Google services. For example, you can find all the photos uploaded to Hangouts in one place.

If you're wondering what's happening with Picasa Web Albums links, this article has some answers:

Links that will continue to work
* Links to photos and albums whose URLs use your user ID number (and not your username).
* Links to Public Galleries whose URLs use your user ID number (and not your username).

Links that will stop working
* Slideshows embedded on websites.
* Picasa Web Albums & photos embedded on websites.
* Links to photos, albums, and Public Galleries whose URLs use your username (and not your user ID number).

{ Thanks, Brandon Giesing. }

Google Hangouts Photo Sharing, Powered by Picasa Web

Now that Google+ Photos is discontinued, Google Apps admins received a message which informs them that Google Hangouts will only use Picasa Web Albums for photo sharing.

"The photo-sharing functionality in Hangouts is changing. Going forward, the ability to share photos and other multimedia in Hangouts Chat will be set by the Picasa Web Albums service rather than by the Google+ service. If Google+ is enabled in your domain, no further action is necessary. Google+ requires Picasa Web Albums so you can continue to share photos using Hangouts Chat just like you always have. If Google+ is not enabled for your domain and you want to use the photo-sharing functionality in Hangouts Chat, you must turn on the Picasa Web Albums service in your Admin console."

This change also affects regular Google users, since photos shared using Hangouts aren't added to Google Photos and you'll only find them in Picasa Web Albums when Google+ Photos will shut down. The same thing will happen with Blogger photos.

Picasa Web Albums and Google+ Photos served as a central hub for almost all the photos uploaded using Google services. This was great, since you could find all your photos in one place, but it also cluttered Picasa Web and Google+ Photos with albums automatically generated by Blogger, Google Hangouts and other services.

It looks like Picasa Web Albums is here to stay, at least for now.

{ Thanks, Petr Man. }