Kicks and Kisses

I had a few albums on Picasa with varied privacy settings, with most of them being shared between a close group, just one being public. Recently, I joined the bandwagon of Google Plus and started seeing all my albums in Google+ photos tab with their respective sharing settings. I had never expected to make a show of my Picasa album photos, which I share between closed groups, for everyone on Google +. It definitely scared me at first, considering who can see what, and in what circles. Then I changed my settings to “Only You”, which thankfully made my albums private. This was not at all a positive user experience for me. And why only Photos? Why not my Google bookmarks?

I would have considered it a good design, if Google + had asked me, “Do you want to share your Picasa photos?”, instead of showing all my albums (including the private ones) under photos tab. Sometimes Integration features are good but one has to be really careful when it comes to the privacy of the digital content.  Perhaps it has happened to other users too, as I see various family photos of my friends on their Plus profile. Google+ increased the discovery of personal photos without making users aware.

Then one day, out of sheer curiosity, I searched my name on Google and found that it indexed my plus profile link, which is fine. But when I searched my name on image search, I was shocked to see all of my PICASA album pictures.  I was terribly disappointed at Google’s controlled yet uncontrolled indexing mechanism. I double checked the Picasa settings and realized that image search is showing cached images. I was happy to discover “How to remove my pictures from Google Image search?”  I used Google URL removal tool to remove the links, and since then, have submitted almost 40 URLs. It was amazing to see that some of the images went away but instead new ones started appearing from same albums. I submitted few more URL removal requests, yet I still see around 10 images appearing from my PICASA albums.

I have been doing since the last month, and am sure that Google must have indexed it again but still I see some of my images appearing in Image search. Today, it surprised me even more when it started showing one of my friends’ album pictures when I searched my name. I never commented on it. I never tagged it. We both are friends on Google+. Why his photos are coming as search results when I search my name, I don’t know.  It never happened to me before I started using Google Plus. I removed all my albums from plus. If it still does not stop showing my pictures, I will delete my Google Plus account, and probably my Picasa albums one day. I hoping the best but yesterday I deleted all my albums and photos from PICASA