Panoramio Will Be Replaced By Google Maps Views

After starting several discussions in various Google Groups and pestering the devs on Twitter and Google+ (sorry guys!), I've finally gotten some clarification on what will be happening to Panoramio. Last week Google announced that they would be expanding the Maps Views service to include geotagged photos. This immediately made me wonder what would happen to Panoramio, a photo sharing and geotagging service acquired by Google in 2007.

Product manager Evan Rapoport recently posted in the Panoramio support forum, saying this:

Over the past year, we've developed a similar community in Views, which lets you publish geo-relevant content (photo spheres and traditional photography) on Google Maps. In the future, we plan to migrate Panoramio into Views, creating one destination where you can publish and peruse imagery from around the globe. Before migrating any imagery, we'll make sure that Views reaches a level of feature maturity that supports the needs of the community.

So, we will have to wait and see how this one plays out. I predict Google will continue to bolster Google Maps Views and will isolate Panoramio as a standalone service that may or may not die out some day.