Hi! If you're a blogger, or intend to become one someday, you will face yourself with the hard task of choosing which image hosting service to use: Flickr or Google's Picasa Web Albums (now also known as Google Photos). I had to go through this myself and as such I'm going to describe my short analysis on both services and why I'm sticking with Google Photos. I'd like to point out that this analysis concerns only the free accounts.
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| (Click the photo for better resolution in Picasa Photostream) |
Hosting space
- Flickr - it allows you to upload 300MB monthly. you can consider it as unlimited space if the 300MB per month is enough for you.
- Google Photos/Picasa - You have 1GB limit but some files do not count for this limit: if you don't have a G+ account, all photos with size equal or smaller than 800x800 pixels will not count; if you have a G+ account, all photos with size 2048x2048 pixels won't count.
Well, I consider that Google Photos/Picasa is a winner here since unless your blog is about photography you won't need to upload images bigger than 2048x2048 pixels. Remember that in most of the blog templates the images shown have a maximum width between 400 and 600 pixels. This results in unlimited space without monthly limits. It has a downside: all the public photos will be shown on your G+ profile.
Image quality
In this matter, Flickr is definitely a winner. Flickr's compressing algorithms are much better than the ones used by Google. You won't find it unusual to find compression artifacts in your Google Photos/Picasa. However, if you consider that most of the images shown in blogs have a maximum width of about 600 pixels, it's not a big deal. To use Google Photos/Picasa's photos in your blog with a good quality(not as good as Flickr's quality though) you have to do some HTML tweaking, but it's really simple and quick to do.
Blog integration
Since I'm using Blogger, Google Photos/Picasa is a winner here. It automatically integrates with your blog and you can pick the photos directly from your Picasa web albums.
Slideshows/Photo Viewers
Flickr wins again here. Since it has a bigger community of users, the amount of photo viewers and slideshow widgets is also bigger. In general, the widgets for Flickr have a better look and feel.
Photostream
Google Photos/Picasa is a winner here. The photostream is unlimited in time, which is something that doesn't happen in Flickr's free accounts. In Flickr the photostream has a maximum size of 200 photos. If you upload more than 200 photos, the older ones will no longer be visible. This applies to the photostream and to all the slideshows that you use. Once the pictures disappear from the photostream, they will also disappear from your slideshows. However, photos are not deleted and will always be visible when a direct link is used.
Video
- Flickr - Flickr grants you a small margin for uploading videos, but you still have the 300 MB limit per month.
- Google Photos/Picasa - all videos under 15 minutes won't count for the 1GB limit.
For me, Google Photos/Picasa wins here again.
And for me the winner is... Google Photos/Picasa! I think that the unlimited storage space and blogger integration makes it more suitable for blogging than Flickr. I also think that Flickr's 200 photos photostream is a huge drawback since all your slideshows will become useless when you upload new photos. I'd like to emphasize that this comparison is based on the free accounts of both services. If I was going for a paid account, I'd definitely stick with Flickr since most of the drawbacks would disappear and the image quality is a lot better than Google's.
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