If you are an active user of Google’s Picasa photo management tools or their Blogger blogging platform, you should prepare yourself for a change. News has broken that Google intends to drop those names from the products. This move is part of the Google+ service, which seems to be leading to a rebranding of Google’s web based tools.
Blogger and Picasa will not be shut down, however. The two service are among the most popular for the internet giant. They will simply be renamed to “Google Blogs” and “Google Photos” respectively. It is rumored that these two are the first of many services to get the Google rebranding treatment. Sources indicate that YouTube will not be changed.
The total rebranding is due to take place over the next six weeks. This time table will likely align with the full public roll out of Google+, which is rumored to be by the end of this month. Its important to keep that date in mind, as it will be the day when private Google profiles are deleted.
The combination of these service with Google+ makes sense. While Google+ has a photo service already, it is easy to notice that it is integrated with Picasa and Picasa’s technology. The Instant Upload feature of the Google+ Android application uploads to Google+ and Picasa simultaneously. It would make sense to drop the branding and combine the two parts officially.
If you want some sort of proof for this pending rebranding, simply look at the screenshot above. Across the top navigation bar, you will see a link that reads Photos. Clicking it takes you to Picasa Web, the web based portal for Picasa. If that doesn’t convince you, then I don’t know what will.
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