Picassa is shutting down, it’s all Google Photos from here on

Google has announced plans to shutter the Picassa photo sharing and storage service as it transitions to Google Photos.

The platform will be retired, beginning on May 1, with users’ files automatically moved over to Google Photos. Existing logins will apply.

The shutdown will happen over the course of the next few months, with the Picassa desktop app being the first to fall. That’ll no longer work after March 1.

“After much thought and consideration, we’ve decided to retire Picassa over the coming months in order to focus entirely on a single photo service in Google Photos,” the company wrote on the Google Photos blog.  

“We believe we can create a much better experience by focusing on one service that provides more functionality and works across mobile and desktop, rather than divide our efforts across two different products.”

See also: Google Photos: What’s New?

The company has outlined steps users can make to ensure a smooth transition. Those who don’t want to transition to Photos will still have the chance to access all of their Picassa Web Albums data.

This new space will make it easy to view, download or delete albums, but users will no longer be able to create, organise or edit them. All of this now takes place in Google Photos, the company points out.

Picassa has been on death row since Google decided to cull Google photos in favour of the Android-based Photos app last year.

The company has apologised for the inconvenience but says the changes will provide the “best photos experience possible.”

it assures Picassa users “Google Photos is a new and smarter product, that offers a better platform for us to build amazing experiences and features for you in the future.”