Samstag, 27. September 2014

Panoramio shutting down

The image platform showing about 60+ million of images (and spheres), collected since 2005 by thousands of photographers and acquired by Google in 2007 is going to be closed down. 

As reason Google gave is to merge with the View platform, they announced the geo-relevant content would be migrated.

I never uploaded any image to the platform but it was always present in Google Maps, often interesting for places without Street View Coverage. But I have to say the panoramas, they call it spheres, are often of low quality, badly stitched or exposed.
There is a petition going (initiated by the original founders of panoramio), though I doubt Google will listen to it, is a corporate decision, it does not make sense to have competing platforms under the same roof.
This should be a learning lesson about relying on services provided for free, you simply can't assume your work won't be lost or the service available for ever.
In this case Google will certainly try to migrate all content, so you did upload images for many ears in vain.
But there are other cases where services are ceased because they company goes down or the service as such was not successful or profitable enough. Google Orkut is also shutting down. (Discontinued Google Services at Wikipedia)

Wikipedia about panoramio.


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