I’m not sure I understand your celebration, Bryan. They fit two completely different purposes: Picasa was how I managed (tagged, edited, collected, uploaded, printed) my Gig Upon Gig of on-pc photographs (most of which are taken from my DSLR); Photos is a nice tool for those I choose to upload and to sync up pictures…

Not unusual practice at all. Remember when PayPal started, they were giving away $10 to a new customer AND the referrer. It scaled down over time but that was the cost of creating a new service. So this isn’t surprising in the least, except that it took this long.