Here is the email I received from Google, on September 14, 2018… maybe September 15 for some people.
Subject: Update regarding your Panoramio photos
Body:
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Hello, |
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Earlier this year, we turned off Panoramio and stopped showing Panoramio photos in Google Maps and Google Earth. Before that happened, we shared our plans to copy all your photos to the Google Album Archive as a full-quality backup. |
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We recently discovered an issue that caused some Panoramio photos to appear in Google Maps/Earth under your Google account name during this backup process. These photos were public in Panoramio, but were previously shared using your Panoramio account name. We have now removed these photos from Google Maps/Earth and will continue to copy your Panoramio photos only to your Album Archive. If you do want to re-share any photos on Google Maps, you can follow the instructions here. |
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Thank you, |
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The Panoramio team |
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Google LLC 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043 |
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You’ve received this mandatory service announcement to update you about important changes to Panoramio. |
“We recently discovered an issue that caused some Panoramio photos to appear in Google Maps/Earth under your Google account name during this backup process.”
They are supposed to! That is the primary goal of the migration. They are supposed to appear in Google Maps/Earth and under my Google account name is fine because Google required that we link our Panoramio account to our Google account to enable the migration! The person who wrote this does not know the goal of the migration, and seems to not know the situation with Panoramio.
The migration was discussed more at this Google Product Forum thread-
(For some reason I cannot view much of that thread right now. Recent posts do not appear.)
Some quotes in that thread posted by the Google Earth team:
“We are migrating the photos of those Panoramio users who agreed to link to their Google+ accounts and share their photos with Google Maps.”
“Once the migration is complete, you should see an improvement in the coverage and availability of photos in Earth, especially in out-of-the-way places.”
“As eligible Panoramio photos are migrated you should see more accurately-placed photos appear. We’re also talking to the Google Maps photos team in hopes of favoring the display of these photos instead of their snapped-to-place ones in our layer.”
“We have to wait until the eligible Panoramio photos are migrated into the new catalog (and hosted under their new URLs) before we can include them in the new Photos layer.”
“For those Panoramio photos eligible for migration, once they are processed they will appear at their original, non-snapped locations where the owner publicly had posted it.”
You have to migrate the photos to Google Maps/Earth. You cannot just copy them to Album Archive.
“If you do want to re-share any photos on Google Maps, you can follow the instructions here.”
That suggestion is ridiculous. First of all, I can say that sharing photos using the Google Maps interface causes the latitude/longitude coordinates to be disregarded. That would lose all the locations set for Panoramio photos. Secondly, wow, that would be a lot of work, and basically it would be like there was no attempted migration at all as it is not much different from adding new photos to Google Maps from scratch.
The situation described in the email is unacceptable. The migration needs to be completed correctly.
