Google Earth – Picasa integration, any minute now…

It looks like Google’s geo-announcements for the week aren’t over yet.

A few hours ago, sharable web albums for Google’s new version of the Picasa photo editor went live for a test run, and the resulting functionality is not unlike Flickr’s. Here is a sample public gallery. (CNET has an early review, Google Blogoscoped does a roundup of early feedback. Me, I’m still waiting on my Web albums invite:-)

Now for the geo-news: On Flickr, an intriguing screenshot shows Flickr user Adski georeferencing/geotagging his Picasa photos from within Google Earth. His photos are listed like placemarks in his Places pane, like so:

picasatab.gif

That’s news too me, and if confirmed, very cool indeed. (Although it’s not clear from the example, it looks like two-way integration between the applications.) We’ll have to await a formal announcement to see wether this also heralds server-hosted My Places for Google Earth, in addition to Picasa photos. It would certainly be in keeping with the direction Google has been heading in for its most recent launches.