Over the last week, Google has been migrating web albums for its online photo service Picasa over to Google+. No, you didn’t get any warning. Yes, it’s sneaky — if not exactly unexpected.
If you head over to http://picasaweb.google.com, you’ll be sent over to your Google+ Photos instead. The only people exempt from the change are those who haven’t bothered to sign up for Google+ yet. If you’re a big Picasa fan, you can go back by using the following URL: https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/myphotos?noredirect=1
The data collected on Google+ is very important to Google’s future, so the company has been doing everything in its power to force people to switch over — even if they don’t want to. But even though lots of users have signed up for Google+ for one reason or another, getting them to stick around is another matter altogether. It’s quite possible that this move will net Google some users on its social network, and, in fairness, Google+ photos has some nice features. But at least give people a little warning, yeah? [Google Operating System via Cnet]