Brian McClendon
Folks,
I’ve been following some of the discussions on this forum regarding the future migration of Panoramio to Views, and I would like to expand on Evan’s statement with some context on how Panoramio and Views fit into the larger picture.
First, let me be clear that we will provide an easy way for you to migrate all your Panoramio photos, their metadata, and their viewcounts to Views. Your photos will be saved into public albums in Google+ and we will provide you a Google Drive storage bonus to cover the additional data usage. And, when we shut down Panoramio, if you do not wish to move your photos over to Views, you can simply download them and not migrate.
As the lead for Google Maps, a co-founder of Google Earth, and a passionate photographer, I’ve always had a great appreciation and love for the Panoramio community. The photos in Panoramio have helped countless people in Google Maps and Google Search to make decisions about where to travel. I believe Views is an important next step for us to grow the photography community to better serve the one billion people who use Google Maps every month.
I want everyone to understand why we made the very difficult decision to migrate Panoramio to Views. Our reasons fall into the following categories:
new requirements that mobile users have when using Google Maps
increased availability of affordable GPS-enabled cameras, primarily smartphones
technical limitations of old infrastructure
The world has gone mobile. Smartphone growth is incredible. Google Maps has now been installed on over one BILLION Android and iOS devices. People use our mobile apps to navigate, but also to make daily decisions about where to go (restaurants, hiking trails, hotels, and more). People need to see photos for these locations.
Sharing photos on Views and Google Maps is also about helping you create a beautiful photo map of all the places you go and helping you remember your experiences there (and perhaps even to help guide a friend). The more often you take photos, the better your map helps you. And, if you do professional work for clients, it’s about giving you more exposure to help you monetize your work and helping them maximize visibility for potential customers.
When Panoramio began, few people had smartphones and nobody shared photos from them. Now most of us have phones in our pockets with optics and image processing abilities that produce excellent photos. Talented photographers everywhere are turning to smartphones as “their other camera” producing amazing images that challenge people’s expectations of what’s possible. And, non-photographers with a little creativity are discovering they too can now create good photos with their phone. And, of course, all of these devices have GPS, making it easier than ever to add photos to a map. Billions of smart phones are the key to enabling Google Maps to provide you with accurate, comprehensive, and recent photos that help you make decisions about where to go or recognize the location when you get there.
Finally, Panoramio is built on old infrastructure that can no longer be maintained. We chose to rebuild it, and we did so in Views. This will enable us to provide more reliable services and far more features as the community grows.
So, let’s get specific about what we’re doing...
Here are the details about the migration to Views:
Curation tools to customize your profile, since we recognize that photographers want control over how their work is displayed. This will include something like the “Best” feature that Panoramio has today.
An easy-to-use migration flow to bring your full resolution Panoramio photos, metadata, and viewcounts into Views. If you’ve already exported Panoramio photos to Google+, you may have duplicates, but our album naming schema should make this easy for you to manage.
We will migrate your viewcounts!
For now, we suggest leaving your Panoramio photos where they are, but trying out Views for some new photos. When the migration flow is enabled, you’ll avoid more duplication and your viewcounts will be retained.
If you choose, your photos that remain on Panoramio un-migrated will continue to be seen on Google Earth and Google Maps (far beyond the migration) if they are associated with a Google account.
The following data and features will not be migrated:
Groups (which has not been popular in Panoramio)
Favorite photographers (though we’re considering similar features)
Comments (since we can’t move comments to Views for those who don’t migrate)
Thank you for being part of the Panoramio community and contributing your photos to help others explore the world. As we migrate to Views, which is a very new product, I assure you we will not do so until we believe the communities needs are met.
Thank you,
Brian McClendon
Vice President, Google Maps