On February 12, 2016, Google announced at their "Official Google Picasa Blog" ("Moving on from Picasa") their plan to focus entirely on a single online photo service at Google Photos. On March 15, 2016, Picasa was no longer supported by Google. The Picasa installation file was removed from the Picasa Help center: https://picasa.google.com To date (10/19/2017), the Picasa Help Center still has help pages, but we expect the pages to be taken down at some point.
Google stated, "As of March 15, 2016, we will no longer be supporting the Picasa desktop application. For those who have already downloaded this—or choose to do so before this date—it will continue to work as it does today, but we will not be developing it further, and there will be no future updates."
What this means for users of Picasa3 (the desktop program)
Even though Picasa3 is no longer supported by Google, you can still use the desktop program to organize photos on your computer, apply edits without harming the original pictures, crop, caption, add face tags, and much more. Picasa3 will work on your computer for as long as it remains compatible with your operating system (OS).
Picasa3 does not store photos, so you will not lose photos on your computer if you uninstall Picasa3. More information, click
If you have already downloaded the Picasa installation file, save it in a safe place for future use. The latest version of Picasa3 for Windows users is 3.9.141 build 259. This version works on Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 10. Save the picasa39-setup.exe file (the file size is 13 MB) to several places such as external drives, flash drives (USB), CDs or online. You would use that file whenever you need to install or reinstall Picasa3.
How to update to the latest version for Windows and Mac: click
Uploading to Google Photos using the green "Upload to Google Photos" button, Tools > Batch upload and "Sync to web" no longer works. You can upload via the Google Photos website. How to upload: click
Turn off automatic updates of Picasa: In the Tools menu, go to Options then the "General" tab and change automatic updates to "Don't check for Updates"; click OK.
The Picasa Resources website by Picasa Top Contributors will still exist, and you can find help here for problems you may have.
Facetags
Picasa stores most of the user-added info within the metadata of the jpg itself. Most of this metadata is in a standard format and will be correctly interpreted and shown by other desktop photo organizers.
The face data can always be found by using a program such as ExifTool which displays all the metadata or desired subsets
There is no standard for how face data is stored and displayed. What this means is that if you transition to another organizer, such as Lightroom or the organizer with Photoshop Elements, the face data will not be displayed as such. One solution is to write scripts, for example for ExifTool (or other programs) to transform the face data to a metadata format which will be interpreted correctly by the program you are switching to. Another solution is a donation-ware Lightroom plugin for importing Picasa face data to Lightroom: http://regex.info/blog/lightroom-goodies/picasa-face-import (Face tag info from Larry and here)
For the future:
Due to Google APIs which may at some point break, the following features may no longer work in Picasa3:
Emailing photos (this feature accesses your Gmail contacts)
Geotagging and viewing geotagged locations in Picasa's "Places" panel
Facetagging photos of Google contacts
If Picaca3 no longer works in the future: