Google Finally Brings Picasa To The Mac

Google announced the now have Picasa for Mac available for download. Why now? Well, MacWorld 2009 is currently underway – so that is why they released it this week. What took so long for Google to bring Picasa to the Mac? I am not sure.

Google had a Picasa Web Albums uploader and an iPhoto plugin for Mac users but never the application.

The Wired Blog has a nice walk through the of many features available in Picasa. Below I will also embed a video demonstration of Picasa for Mac.

As many of you know, I am a long time Mac user. I personally have been using iPhoto with Flickr. I plan on giving Picasa a try, since it won’t really impact my iPhoto or Flickr albums. I am particularly eager to try the name tagging feature, amongst other features – but I am sure it will take a lot to move me off Flickr and onto Picasa completely.

More coverage on this release can be found at Techmeme.

Postscript: A few hours later, I check out some of the live coverage of MacWorld and I see Apple has added tons of features, including the face recognition feature I was looking for in Picasa, to iPhoto. So maybe I won’t bother switching or testing Picasa.