Picasa was a cross-platform image organizer and image viewer for organizing and editing digital photos, integrated with a now defunct photo-sharing website, originally created by a company named Lifescape[3] (which at that time was incubated by Idealab) in 2002.[4] "Picasa" is a blend of the name of Spanish painter Pablo Picasso, the word casa (Spanish for "house") and "pic" for pictures.[4][5]
Native applications for Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, and macOS were available, and for Linux, the Windows version was bundled with Wine compatibility layer. An iPhoto plugin and a standalone program for uploading photos were available for Mac OS X 10.4 and later.
In July 2004, Google acquired Picasa from Lifescape and began offering it as freeware.[4] The name was also registered by Google as an LLC.[6] On February 12, 2016, Google announced it was discontinuing support for Picasa Desktop and Picasa Web Albums, effective March 15, 2016, and focusing on the cloud-based Google Photos as its successor.[7] Picasa Web Albums, a companion service, was closed on May 1, 2016.[8]
As of January 2015[обновлять], the latest version of Picasa is 3.9, which supports Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7, and has Google+ integration for users of that service.[9] Version 3.9 also removed integration with Picasa Web Albums for users of Google+.[10]
Since June 2006, Linux versions have become available as free downloads for most distributions of the Linux operating system. It is not a native Linux program but an adapted Windows version that uses the Wine libraries.[11] Google has announced that there will be no Linux version for 3.5.[12] Currently, Google has only officially offered Picasa 3.0 Beta for Linux.[citation needed]
On April 20, 2012, Google announced that they were deprecating Picasa for Linux and will no longer maintain it for Linux.[13]