Google to Rebrand Blogger, Picasa, in Google+ Push

As part of its push to unify its brand for the public launch of its Google+ social networking service, Google will rebrand two of its oldest services, Picasa and Blogger, Mashable has learned.

The changes will result in Picasa becoming Google Photos, and Blogger becoming Google Blogs. In addition, several other Google properties are likely to be affected, although Google's YouTube won't see its name change (which makes sense, as YouTube is arguably Google's biggest brand).

It's unclear what the other properties that are being rebranded are, though we can speculate on Gmail being rebranded Google Mail (although end users are usually unhappy with longer email address domain names) or perhaps Adsense being rebranded Google Ads. We'll see.

Timing of the move is said to be four to six weeks. That matches up well with other information that says that the public rollout for Google+ will be on or before July 31. That's also the day that all private Google Profiles will be deleted.

Google has rebranded other products in the past, including JotSpot (acquired in 2006, rebranded as Google Sites in 2008) and GrandCentral (relaunched as Google Voice in 2009). It's never rebranded anything as large or popular as Picasa or Blogger, however. Blogger was acquired in 2003 and Picasa was acquired in 2004.

Quite a few probably will object to the move (will Foss Patents, for example, become fosspatents.googleblogs.com?) but it makes a lot of sense for Google. The company has a lot riding on Google+, and has gone so far as to tie employee bonuses in 2011 to its success ... or failure ... in social.