Google Acquires Picasa, Improves Blogging Tools

clandestine writes "It appears that our lovable search engine has again expanded its horizons - the internet wasn't enough; now you can search and organize your own pictures. I don't know about you, but I use Google for nearly everything; heck, I found links about their acquisition of Picasa through Google News! Any slashdotters going to benefit from this tech, or already do? And yes, the addition of Picasa to their arsenal is a couple of days old, but they just started linking them on the homepage today."

Comments

Re:Monopoly

[arieswind]

Google will never become another Microsoft. If you think about it, the cost of moving is 0. Google will only be the market leader as long as it is the best. As soon as something better comes out, people will switch over. Google's sucess is based off of how good its product is, Microsoft's success is based off of how well it can lock its consumers in.

Q: When will they start being evil?

[soloport]

A: When they go public. :-/

How many of you (probably would have to be not-so-wet behind the ears) have joined a truly excellent company, gotten your hopes up that "This is the company to last the rest of my career!" -- it's that good -- only to watch it go psycho when the board decides to take it public?

No, the madness doesn't happen overnight. You slowly begin hearing about the symptoms as the pressure begins... "But it's the end of the month! This (shit) has to ship!", etc.

Sad, but true and (by my experience) inevitable. I wish there were no rules which forced a company to commit what is essentially "fiscal lobotomy".

Re:Funny thing..

[Vitus Wagner]

When microsoft "expands" we all bitch and whine, but then google goes out and devours companies and services, and its suddenly "cute".


It is because:

1. 
   
2. Google services just works and are not famous for their bugs and instability
   
3. Google doesn't require you to upgrade your PC with each new release of their flagship product
   
4. Google doesn't force PC manufacters to buidle their product with your hardware using unfair clauses in contracts
   
5. Google customers do not send you documents in cryptic format which only Google products can read.
   
6. Google is not designed to enable virus propagation.
   

There was other point - you don't trust your data to Google. But since introduction of GMail this is no more true

Re:Monopoly

[isopossu]

Gmail's 1 GB mailbox without the option to

1. forward the messages
   
2. move the whole mailbox elsewhere

looks just like locking the consumers in. For example in Yahoo you can buy yourself out by paying $ 20 and upload your 2G anywhere. You can't do this in Gmail.

AskJeeves?

[peterdaly]

"With the IPO, Google will have huge pockets. This could put Google in the market to buy a much larger player, such as AskJeeves or even AOL," he said.

I don't think the person who wrote this really understands Google's business. Google for the most part has been buying up innovative technologies which require relativley low overhead to run or integrate. I don't view AskJeeves as innovative, and don't view AOL as low overhead by any means.

I know this is nitpicking a small relativly not important part of the article, but it lept out at me as a "huh?" section.

-Pete

The Yahooization of Google

[Cavio]

Does it concern anyone else that Google is going the way of Yahoo? Trying to become the end-all-be-all of web services seems a sure way to make all your offerings mediocre at best.

Back in 1997, Yahoo was the cool kid on the block, and was both buying and building every feature under the sun. People lapped it up, and thought it was wonderful to have all their internet needs under one umbrella. Then, reality set it. Yahoo stopped enhancing and in some cases (Yahoo Groups) even maintaining the services. Quality has deteriorated, and the once proud Yahoo brand had withered and crumbled into what is now the K-Mart of the internet.

I guess Google wants to be the Wal-Mart.