Panoramio closes
RIP Panoramio, Jul 15 2005 – Nov 4 2016
Panoramio — the leading map-based photo-sharing website — is closing down. Over the past eleven years, over 94 million geolocation-tagged photos have been uploaded to Panoramio. After being acuired by Google, those photos are now used in Google Earth, Google Maps, and Google’s new Local Guides community. But the popular map site is sadly going away.
“Today, with photo upload tools in Google Maps and our Local Guides program, we are providing easy ways for you to share your photos with an active and growing community. As such, we’ve decided to move forward with closing down Panoramio.”
— Panoramio/Google, Nov 4, 2016
Panoramio was started by Spanish entrepreneurs Joaquín Cuenca Abela and Eduardo Manchón Aguilar in July 2005. Two years later, in July 2007, Panoramio was acquired by Google for an undisclosed amount, having been a prominent feature on Google Earth and Google Maps.
“I am pleased to tell you that we’ve agreed to purchase Panoramio, a website based in Spain that links millions of photos with the exact geographical location where they were taken.”
— John Hanke, Director for Maps, Earth and Local, Google, May 30, 2007
Google announced the closure back in 2014 “in order to invest our efforts into improving photo-sharing experiences directly inside Google Maps.” The founders won a stay of execution for a few years, but now that time is up.
Panoramio Global StatsAs of 10/24/16, per panorank.com | |
|---|---|
| Panoramio users | 7,473,464 |
| Panoramio users with photos uploaded | 4,159,004 |
| Panoramio users with over 100 photos uploaded | 114,317 |
| Panoramio users with over 1,000 photos uploaded | 11,291 |
| Uploaded photos | 94,370,531 |
| Overall views in total | 75,640,891,592 |
| Overall views in Panoramio.com | 17,557,894,366 |
| Overall views in Google Earth | 49,191,499,862 |
| Overall views in Google Maps | 3,869,378,745 |
| Overall views in Widget API | 5,022,118,619 |
| Alexa Rank | 3,435 |
| Source: panorank.com, 10/24/16 | |
Websites similar to Panoramio
- Flickr, the leading photo-sharing website, founded in 2004 and now owned by Yahoo/Verizon.
- Wikimapia, a privately owned “open-content collaborative map,” launched in 2006 by Alexandre Koriakine and Evgeniy Saveliev in Russia.
- 360cities.net “geo-referenced, interactive panoramic photos,” by Jan Vrsinsky in Prague.
- Atlas Obscura “the definitive guide to the world’s wondrous and curious places,” founded in 2009 by Joshua Foer and Dylan Thuras.
- Waymarking “provides tools for you to catalog, mark and visit interesting and useful locations around the world,” based in Seattle.
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Images are screenshots of Panoramio.com from October 24, 2016.
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