Google finally puts Picasa albums on the Web

Google launched a new beta ofPicasaon Tuesday [news story].

Its biggest new feature is the capability to post pictures directly from the app to a Google-hosted Web album.

It’s about time.

I was one of those people.

At first blush, integration appears quite good.

It couldn’t be simpler.

The albums get nice human-readable URLs and sharing them is a snap.

Other Picasa users can download images (if you allow it) into their own Picasa libraries.

And the Web pages that Picasa Web Albums creates are very clean and easy to navigate.

There’s a bigger issue I have with this service: It’s one-way.

Once you upload photos from Picasa to Picasa Web Albums, there’s no link between them.

I’m disappointed that Google did not more tightly integrate their Picasa software and Web service.

Oddly, Gmail, which is also free, gives you 2.7 gigabytes to play around in.

I was hoping for more innovation and a richer feature set for Picasa’s online product.