Problems With Non Google Hosted Photos Are Separate From Problems With Picasa Hosted Photos

We see daily evidence of confusion, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken, about photo hosting.

How much space do I get for photo storage?

and

What happened to the pictures on my blog?

and

Why does my blog look weird now?

Some of these questions come from photos (pictures) hosted by Google, others from photos (pictures) hosted outside Google - and the uncertainty about hosting leads to confusion about the problems.

We've been exploring various issues with Picasa, aka Google photo hosting, recently.

• Identifying Picasa problems.
• Interference involved in setting up other Google services.
• Loss of Picasa accounts.
• Storage limitations involved in Picasa hosting.

Similar issues exist with photo hosting outside Google - and blaming Google for problems which they don't cause (except, as they provide a service like Blogger, which permits use of non Google services) is not a productive use of anybody's time. Non Google services like Flickr, ImageShack, and PhotoBucket each have their own limitations and policies.

One interesting problem with photo storage, seen occasionally, comes from third party template providers and hosting of background images used in the templates. Loss of a background image, even if it does not result in multiple views of the infamous ImageShack Frog when bandwidth limits are exceeded, can cause problems with blog layout.

There are advantages, and disadvantages, of using Google and non Google photo storage. If you publish a Blogger blog, you're entitled to use any choice which pleases you - but you, as the blog owner, need to be aware of the choices, and possible consequences.

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